Winning the Puppy Lottery
After humbly prostrating ourselves before every puppy shelter in the greater Lake Michigan region, we finally got accepted to adopt a puppy! Much like winning the Lottery, our success involved a great deal of luck and persistent, unwavering effort (please note that Dustin’s comprehension of the Lottery is roughly on-par with his understanding of particle physics and should not be construed as accurate ~HLH).
Hannah found an adorable litter of puppies, absurdly named Aetna, Humana, Signa, Blue Cross, and United. What, were American, Southwest, Delta, Spirit, and United already taken? We applied for Aetna and United within literal seconds of their appearance online, but two other people, apparently using tactics they learned doing High Frequency Trading, got to them first. We did get wait-listed, though, pending approval on an application that makes the SAT look like the maze on a children’s menu at Cracker Barrel.
Now, my operating assumption at this point was that being wait-listed for a puppy was kinda like being runner-up in the Superbowl: close, but no cigar; better luck next time. Imagine my surprise, then, when I was on a work call three days later and Hannah threw herself into the window behind me like a near-sighted bird, yelling something that I couldn’t make out because again…window (It was IMPORTANT!~HLH). But she had just discovered that Aetna’s previous family…
