Meeting Teddy
What the hell did we get ourselves into? 3 months ago, my husband and I decided to make one of our life goals happen. Our dreams were becoming a reality. And that dream, is the same dream that every 10 year-old girl has, to have a golden retriever puppy. We were, and still are, fairly inept at what is required to train and raise a happy, healthy, well-adjusted puppy. And until I was alone with her on the first day, I had no idea just how much.
What led us to our genius plan was the fact that I would not be working for 3 months and we happened to find a breeder that would have a liter available at the exact right time. And as luck would have it, the breeder we found didn’t realize what dog dumb dumbs we are.
On pick up day, we drove through miles and miles of corn fields and up and down rolling hills, past mining plants and landfills to a tiny town on the boarder of Ohio and Pennsylvania to meet our most perfect wonderful darling of fluff. The breeder’s home was a sprawling brick ranch with a well-manicured lawn and 3 car garage. I thought, wow that must be worth a lot of golden retriever puppies.
She greeted us, and let us know she was in the middle of delivering a liter so she needed to get her husband to come relieve her. Clearly we arrived on a very busy day. We stood in her circular driveway in the hot sun, bursting with excitement, ready to meet our little Teddy. We had counted down first the months, then weeks, then days to meeting our new friend. Total clueless puppy obsessed idiots.
Her husband came out of one the kennel areas off to the side of the house to take her place in the birthing situation. He was wearing rubber boots up to his knees, covered in dirt and sweaty. In my head hanging out with puppies all day did not look like this. In my version it was all chasing puppy tails and ice cream cones. This would be one of the many assumptions I had made in my life about pet ownership and management that would prove to be very wrong.
Once the delivery was covered the breeder brought us to wait in the garage. She went into a side kennel, and came back with the most adorable puppy in her arms and said, ‘Here she is. This one is yours.’ We just stared at our puppy, not saying a word. Waiting for her to say something — that might have been another assumption, turns out puppies don’t talk. She just stared back at us like ‘What’s going on here, why am I all alone. Where did my sister go?’ She was so still and calm I thought, ‘Oh god she’s drugged, its a 20/20 nightmare drugged puppies in North East Pennsylvania. What if we got a dead puppy?
After a solid 5 minutes of standing in the garage all of us just staring at each other in silence, the breeder directed us into the house to go over next steps. She put the puppy down, tossed a hedgehog stuffed toy and the puppy leapt to life. David and I squealed like little girls. Look she moves! And has a tail! Here’s where Susan probably started to catch on that we were not the most seasoned dog people. Because after that she said things very slowly and said them a couple of times, nodding while she gave us all the instructions. She should have tattooed what I needed to know on my forearms because all I remember from what she said was that Teddy’s mom had great hips for a golden retriever. They were a 2 something on a scale of something. This was the level of my listening comprehension. Do you know what the vet does not ask at the first puppy check up, ‘what were her mothers hips like?’
In the time it took to go over vaccine timelines and give us newbies some tips — my sunglasses shattered on the floor, Teddy ate a bowl of cat food, and peed on an oriental rug. When it seemed like enough of everything had happened, we carried our new baby out to the car. With a folder of info and a warning to not feed your dog cat food, we were ready to go. I felt a little like I was stealing her. Like out of nowhere my mother was going to pop out from behind the tree and say, ‘Oh no, you put that puppy right back. This is a lot of responsibility. Remember what happen with those gerbils in the 3rd grade?’ But no one stopped us. We got in the car, David driving, me in the back with Teddy and drove away. Picture perfect.
