The Sweetest Addition

I always said I didn’t want to get a dog until we lived in a house. I said that having a dog in our two-bedroom apartment already overrun by our two human children was unreasonable. It would be too cramped, too difficult, too inconvenient. My wife agreed – at least verbally – but I’m skeptical if she actually meant it. Even if a verbal contract is binding in the State of New York, I wonder if she always knew we would end up getting a dog sooner than I had suggested.

Then, in March of 2020, our lives turned upside down when COVID hit.

The pandemic forced our children to stay home from school, away from their friends and any other in-person interactions. My wife and I could see our children’s moods changing. Their irritability grew and their anxiety skyrocketed. Our daughter threw tantrums and screamed whenever we tried to encourage her to participate in her class sessions on Zoom. Our son argued when we reviewed his schoolwork and voiced his displeasure at only having weekly contact with his class.

We agreed that a dog would be a wonderful distraction for our family from the tensions of the outside world. If our kids could focus on caring for a new furry family member, perhaps they could forget about being terrified to leave the apartment and interact with the outside world. My wife applied to every pet adoption agency in the city in the hopes that one might land a match.

Weeks passed with barely any responses. We completed a few interviews but did not hear anything else in the way of concrete progress. The negative feelings in our home continued to decline as each day came to an end. My wife and I promised each other that, if we did not hear from an agency by our daughter’s birthday, we would forgo the adoption process and buy a dog ourselves.

Then, with just over a week to go before our daughter turned four, we got a text from Rescue City. “Minnie,” a 13-pound, 8-ish-month-old terrier mix, was at a kill shelter in North Carolina and needed a home. We  responded immediately and received approval for the foster-to-adopt program through the adoption agency.

T and I texted back and forth with Rescue City’s staff – without telling our kids –and put the plan in motion to adopt our new dog.

That Saturday morning, my wife suggested that we go for a drive to nowhere in particular and then out to breakfast. Our children agreed, by some miracle, without asking any questions about our specific destination.

We piled into the car and made our way to Brooklyn to meet the agency’s truck. My wife and I glanced at each other pointedly during the drive, amazed that our children had come along so willingly without the slightest suspicion of a surprise.

The staff said that they would unload the dogs and bring them directly to their new owners’ cars. They would provide any supplies we needed and we would be on our way with our new dog.

 As we pulled into the parking lot, my wife pointed out the truck to our kids.

“People are adopting dogs?” our son said, frowning slightly.

“Yeah,” my wife answered. “Guess what?”

“Wha—wait, really?” he exclaimed, the realization flooding over him. “We’re getting a dog right now?”

“Yes, one of these dogs is going to come home with us,” we answered.

The kids squealed and laughed, their faces suddenly bursting with joy, and I gave my wife’s hand a squeeze. We had almost forgotten what their genuine smiles looked like.

A few minutes later, the shelter staff member placed the newest member of our family in my lap. The dog’s size surprised me; she seemed much smaller in her photo. She leaned into me as I held her and I could feel her trembling under the blankets in a mix of cold and fear. I whispered in her ear that she was safe and that we were going to take the best care of her.

It would be inaccurate to say that our new puppy solved all of our problems over the last ten months. We still had conflicts at home, experienced loss in our family and dealt with countless stressors trying to remain safe and healthy. But we named her Babka on purpose, after the cinnamon cake that matches her coloring; she has made our lives sweeter and richer and we simply cannot get enough of her.