You may have noticed I haven’t written any blog posts in a while… or maybe you haven’t.  Either way, I’ve been a little distracted lately.  I have been working on some really cool things, and one in particular has taken up a lot of my time.

Her name is Nola, or as we sometimes call her… Nolabees!

Nola is not exactly new news, but she is very good news.  Back in August, we had to say goodbye to our sweet, 15-year-old puppy dog, Ruby.  As anyone who has ever had a furry family member can tell you, it was horrible.  Losing a dog is so sad, but eventually you have to make the choice to move on.  Some move on faster than others, and some take longer to recover.  We waited 3 months to decide to adopt our new baby.  In November, a sweet little puppy came into the world, and we knew we had to adopt her.  We weren’t necessarily ready, but she was.  If we didn’t scoop her up then, someone else would, and we didn’t want to risk losing this cute little nugget.

Our friend who volunteers for an amazing no-kill dog shelter fostered a husky, who gave birth to a litter in her house. This superstar fostered a mama and her 8 newborn puppies, too!  We were lucky enough to go meet this sweet mama and her pups at the young age of 4 weeks.  Once you meet a puppy, you can’t undo it.  That is what happened with Nola.  I was hooked.  If I could have cloned Ruby, I would have, but since I couldn’t, I had all these ideas of what I did or didn’t want in my next dog.  For example, I never thought I’d get a husky.  I never thought I’d get a dog with pointy ears.  I always thought I’d end up with a floppy-eared, super furry, cuddly looking dog.  I never wanted a dog with different colored eyes. I was like the perpetually single lady who has a written list of all the qualities she wants in her perfect man that she never finds– except I wasn’t.  I had all these ideas of what I thought I wanted in a dog, and ironically, I ended up with a dog who was the opposite of everything I thought I’d get.

And even though I thought I had all these requirements, I picked her.

You may know by now that I love to turn the smallest, silliest stories into life lessons, and I’ve done that yet again.   Sometimes we think we want something, but we find out that we were completely wrong.  We realize that maybe that’s not what we wanted at all, or maybe we decide those details we thought were so important don’t even matter, or maybe we learn that we are more open than we thought.  I thought I knew exactly how I wanted my dog to be cute, but I learned that my perception wasn’t the only way for her to achieve total and utter cuteness.  In fact, I can’t imagine a having a dog that is any different from how she is.  I didn’t want a dog with 2 different colored eyes, and that’s what I picked.  (By the way, I did want those adorable eyebrows!)  I also got a spazzy, hyper, high maintenance diva of a puppy that loves to cuddle, loves all people and all dogs, loves adventure, and constantly makes me laugh.  She’s perfectly imperfect, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We’re so lucky when life delivers us something that is even better than what we imagined.