You know the song, 'And they called it puppy love, oh I guess they'll never know"…and so it goes. I guess I never knew that sometimes it's not puppy love; well, not initially, anyway.
Right in amongst the crazy month of September, right in the middle of my bereavement and Covid, a little black bundle of joy, Isla Bacon (Yes. The boys wanted to name her Bacon, so we compromised) bowled right into our family. She's a black lab puppy and she's a joy - but it took me a while to see the joy.
In my later years, I have finally come to realise that every now and then I am afflicted by anxiety. I always just thought it was nerves. In fact, that's probably what we've called it ever since I was a child. Now that I think about it, I got nervous quite often. But I just put it down to 'nerves'.
When this little puppy joined our family, I thought I was prepared for the sleepless nights. We forked out $50 and bought a pet toy in the shape of a sheep - it has a beating heart inside it to mimic the mother's heartbeat.
Well, that was a complete waste of money, as you might have guessed. She howled, barked and cried all night. I also howled and cried all night. Night two will be better, I thought. No; it was worse. And then my body started reacting. I was having very negative thoughts about why we even got a puppy - how was I going to tell the boys we were giving her back, this was a huge mistake, etc.