As you may or may not know, Zack and I don’t have children. I don’t say yet as that decision is ever-evolving with us. While babies are cute, we love the freedom of not having children. While that may selfish to some, and maybe it is, I feel it would be more selfish to have children and pawn them off to spend time doing the things we want or have feelings of regret if/when we had them before being ready. That being said, we do have babies.. they have 4 legs, fur, and wet noses. They are our 8 year old Basset Hound Huckleberry, and our 4 year old Rhodesian Ridgeback/Lab/Hound mix Sawyer. And I probably love them just as much as most people love their human kids.
Zack got Huckleberry when he was a puppy and living in San Diego, before we were dating. He is stubborn, and affectionate, and quite needy. He thinks he is a lap dog despite being 60 pounds, loves the first half of a walk, and is always hungry. He will do anything for a treat or food. He knows when breakfast and dinner are to be served and if you are late he will continuously flip his bowl, whine, and basically do anything to annoy you until you stop and feed him. The dog food is in a container in the basement, and since moving to CT he has a hilarious new habit of running downstairs with you to watch you scoop the food in the bowls. If we shut the door and and he can’t come down to inspect, he gets so angry and scratches madly at the door and barks. He never used to do this in Virginia so I’m not sure what it’s about. Maybe it’s the new food we feed them he loves even more? Who knows.
Please ignore my husband’s creeper stache – This was taken in ‘no shave November’
probably my favorite photo of Huck, in one of his favorite spots – laying on my feet under my desk
We got Sawyer when he was a puppy from our best friends, whose dogs had 12 puppies! The puppies needed homes, and Zack was about to be deployed so we got him as something to help keep me busy during the deployment, but I also had been wanting another dog. Sawyer is a chatty dog. He has the funniest personality. I know that sounds weird, but you have to meet him to understand. I don’t know if you have ever seen videos of huskies when they sing/howl and it’s almost like they talk. Sawyer does that. Sometimes he sounds like Chewbacca and I know what most of his different kinds of talking mean. Zack mostly thinks it’s annoying but I love it. His favorite place to lay is in the crook of my knees, with his head on top of my legs when I sleep. He loves to run and chase, and if you ask him for a kiss he knows the command and will usually give you one.
Both Zack and I always had dogs growing up, and we love them in general. We love watching Animal Planet (which we often leave on for the dogs when we aren’t home). We probably spoil them and treat them better than we need to (yes, we gave them some lamb from our Easter dinner) but we would rather spoil them than have anyone accuse us of not caring about them enough. One of my dreams is to one day own a dog rescue, but I’m not sure it would work out as I would want to keep all of them. You know all those Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercials and the ones for saving the polar bears and the tigers? Yeah they make those for me guys, sorry. haha I have to change the channel or I will give them my life savings.
While I know caring for a dog is not the same as a child, to us they are still our babies. Like toddlers who don’t listen all the time, can be overly needy, have temper tantrums and accidents. But we love them, and how sweet and how much they love us. They make us better people and even though our house is always COVERED in dog hair, and it can be hard to take a weekend trip, we wouldn’t trade them for anything.
Follow me on instagram @tiffanymjoyce and you can see our pooches, they even have their own hashtag – #adventuresofhuckandsawyer
