22/50: Love & Cookies
You know you truly love someone when you make them cookies. Itâs less about the act and more about the snack. At least, thatâs how it goes with Woody, the 11-year old beagle Katy and I adopted 2.5 years ago.
Also, itâs less about how many we make as long as we donât run out*.
The reason for making homemade cookies can be summed up pretty quickly: We bought some at the farmersâ market once and thought, âWe could do this.â Then we bought them like 5 more times, and we thought, âWe really should make our own. Weâre spending way too much money.â A year later, we finally started making her cookies. Now, itâs every Sunday evening.
And she knows it. She starts pacing the kitchen, putting her nose in everything, and then, once we pop them in the oven, she waits patiently in her kennel. Because when she goes in her kennel, she gets a treat. She has us trained so well.
Getting to this point with Woody has been an adventure. As I mentioned, Katy and I adopted her when she was eight. Adopting an elderly dog? I would definitely do it again. Adopting an elderly beagle? Probably a rookie mistake â since neither of us were ready for this food obsessed monster to take over every meal.
And to walk her? If we can make it the length of one block in 15 minutes, weâre making record time. Given, when sheâs not on her walk, eating, or waiting to eat, sheâs sleeping â tongue out** and leg propped up on any object nearby.
This is why we chose an elderly dog. We needed it to match our lifestyle. Weâre out and about quite a bit, and we needed a dog that would be like, âYou go ahead. Give me some treats, and Iâll stay here and sleep on the couch.â
What we didnât expect, however, was the string of misinformation from the shelter we adopted her from and the first few weeks of welcoming her to our home to feel like a puzzle weâd never solve.
When they told us sheâd been brought in by a family with an allergic child, what they didnât tell us was that sheâd been in three other homes since and returned after various lengths of time. That some of the families had struggled to pay her enough attention, and that no one knew why she cowered when we reached down to pet her head.
What we quickly learned: We needed to retrain her to go to the bathroom outside and that she needed time and space to feel comfortable. Oh, also she wanted to eat every sock/thing made of wool she could get in her mouth.
After a month, the accidents stopped. After another month, she would sit or lay down close enough for us to pet her. By the end of the first 6 months, weâd lost three socks and one mitten.
Also, we had no idea why she was named Woody***.
There was a lot of lost sleep. We laid awake at night, asking ourselves, âWhy are we having such a hard time with this? Weâre responsible people.â And the reality is weâd introduced something new to our lives and we had to figure out how to find a new balance.
What could we provide for her that no one else had? A safe home; a comfortable couch. Why? She only has a few years left. Letâs make them her best yet.
How do we do this? Letâs make her cookies. Sheâll love that.
â
*She pouts. And itâs impossible to explain it to her.
**Her tongue is almost always out. She can pull it in. But she prefers to have it dangling.
***She likes to listen to me play guitar, so we call her Woody Guthrie around the house.
My new writing project started earlier this year. About halfway through but thinking now about how I could keep this thing going.
