First, I have no idea where this year is going. January felt like the longest month ever as it went on, but looking in the rear view mirror, it feels like it was gone in a blink!
Second, I realized in the chaos I never formally introduced Ruby!
When my old dog, Lilly, died in 2016, I thought I'd never be able to deal with that kind of loss again. To be fair, it was a blow after a string of not-so-awesome things so I was guarded for good reason. But she was a part of my family, and the loss cut deep. As time went on, I knew the process of getting the house ready to sell and then moving twice would be much easier without a new dog, so I put dog ownership in the back of my mind.
Steve and I both like dogs and said we both wanted one, so when we started to get settled in the new house, we started browsing Petfinder. We browsed for a couple of months, and then decided we should just go look at some dogs at an adoption event to see how interested we really were. I found Adopt Me Bluegrass Pet Rescue in one of my Petfinder searches and we went to one of their events at a local Petco. There were a lot of wonderful dogs up for adoption, but Steve gravitated towards Ruby, who had been surrendered from somewhere in Tennessee. They think she's about 1.5 years old and some sort of rat terrier/Chihuahua mix. She was very chill and relaxed in a chaotic situation, and we put in an adoption application for her. So much for feeling things out before making a decision! (Sidenote: I also made the decision on which car to buy that same day. Must have been something in the air.)
I'm not going to lie – having a new dog has been really overwhelming at times. Steve and I had just settled into a new routine – something I was craving for so long during the moving process – and she threw things all out of whack. I went through puppy depression, which isn't something I knew existed until I was searching on the internet. And thank goodness there was information out there, because I had so much anxiety over the disruption to our lives, change in schedules, thinking we made a horrible decision and we weren't adequately prepared to take care of a dog. All of this despite being a previously happy dog owner! She was so well behaved, all things considered (crate trained and pretty much house trained, knew how to “sit”) but for whatever reason it felt really overwhelming.
Thankfully after a few weeks passed, we settled into a routine and she's really fun to have around. She is much higher energy than we thought she'd be after initially seeing her, but being 11 pounds, there's not much destruction she can do! Her favorite activities are climbing on everything and everyone, removing all the stuffing out of her toys, hiding under blankets, and laying in sun beams.
As I was writing this post, she continued to climb on my lap. I've never had a lap dog before!
She makes us laugh multiple times a day, and we're so happy to have her as part of our family! 💗 If you're interested in my occasional sub-par photos of Ruby, you can find her on Instagram.
