I'm not really a dog person...

Meet Maisy - 3.5 lbs of pure fluff and love.

Well, now she's 8 lbs of pure fluff and love because she's six months old... but we'll back up in time since these pictures are all from her first week home.

I'm not really a dog person. I don't like their slobbery noses, and I don't like their smell, and I don't like their fur, and I don't like that they poop. 

Brian feels the same way, so it was easy through our first 18 years of marriage to not get a dog. But then our kids got older and developed their own opinions on the matter and they did not agree with our rather snooty and judgmental views on dogs. They used words like 'fun' and 'cute' and 'loyal', and they've been wearing us down for years any way they could. Miles, for example, took his daily writing prompt and weaved into every single one (for months) reasons why we should get a dog. His essays were not what I'd call convincing or well argued, but they were certainly passionate and creative... which, in turn, made them slightly convincing after all.

I'm embarrassed to admit just how picky I was in selecting a perfect little canine companion... it had to be completely non-shedding, hypoallergenic from both parents, small but not yappy, playful but not crazy, have an adorable little face and beautiful coloring... it took us three months to find her once we started looking, and we felt pretty lucky in that because at first it looked like we were going to have to pay to put our names on several different waiting lists that were a full year long.

Anyway, it was important to me to find the perfect puppy because I knew it might take a little bit of thought work to get myself to a place of enjoying the puppy, and thought it would be easier if I controlled for as many circumstances up front as I could. 

Of course, there's no such thing as perfection, so even after I picked her up in St. George, I still felt a bit sick to my stomach through the two hour drive home, hoping I'd not just made a most terrible mistake. I was concerned that her presence in my home would count as a mild negative in my life, along with the laundry, or tolerating the teenage boy smell whenever all the friends come over and work up a sweat playing tag downstairs... something that I'd rather not do, but that I do do because I love my children. In addition, I was concerned that a puppy would feel to me like one more set of eyes looking to me, needing me, for love and care and life-sustaining involvement.

But I was happy to note that after just a couple of days I felt rather... indifferent.

And then a few days after that I found myself smiling occasionally while I was all by myself watching her play.

And then I started taking pictures of her first bath... and I realized I was on a slippery slope towards love. 

And now, six months later, she is sitting here by my feet (with a cone head since she just got spayed, poor thing), and I can't even believe we thought our home was full of love before she arrived. We are all completely wrapped up and in love with her!

Anyway - back to the first week.

I love watching my kids with her. Miles, after just two days, exclaimed, "I vow to never live without a dog again!" I'm so sorry, Miles's future wife... I hope you love dogs as much as he does.

Also, we felt we needed another red-head in the family, so this worked out well.

Eliza was a little apprehensive for the first few weeks (anyone surprised?). Maisy was a bit too unpredictable for her. But has since adopted her as her favorite friend and carries her around the house every chance she gets.

Maisy turns heads everywhere we go, and she has the sweetest little personality to go along with that cute face. Whenever we take her to the vet, the staff all joke that we're going to have to wrestle someone to take her back home.

She fits so perfectly into our family and our lives would feel a whole lot emptier without her.

I still don't quite consider myself a dog person... but I definitely consider myself a Maisy person.