Dave:
It’s quiet.  My apartment is clean and organized.  I sleep in on the weekends.  I take my socks off and throw them on the floor.  I can even leave my half-eaten hamburger on the coffee table while I go and get another beer and not have to worry if it’s still going to be there when I get back.  However, things are about to change.

Starting tomorrow my socks will never be found. Attempts at sleeping in will be met with a cold wet noise and door scratching.  I’ll be lucky to walk down the hallway in the dark without tripping on a ball, cutting my foot on a bone or tripping over Carlos the rubber ducky.  Hair  will  start to appear everywhere – and I do mean everywhere. If I dare  lose sight of my unfinished food, it won’t even be around long enough for me to kiss it goodbye. 

Tomorrow the dog moves in.  Quiet time will be over.

Feebs:
It’s early February 2006 and about seven months ago I had moved out of my house in Chicago away from my Mom and two dogs.  I’ve never lived without my mom, without a dog, or even in another state, let alone in Virginia, a million miles away.  At first I thought dog-free living would be heaven. Just like Dave said: No one stealing my stuff and chewing it up.  No dog hair on all my clothes or 3 am barking fits.  But I guess you aren’t really living life without all the messes, noise and hair, because after the last six months of dealing with a crabby, homesick girlfriend (I’m referring to little ol’ me of course!), Dave finally has had enough and decided to cheer me up for Valentine’s day and add a missing piece back into my life.

After Dave found an ad in the newspaper for Akita/Labrador puppies,  we drove 40 minutes to a not-so-nice neighborhood in Maryland to check them out.  I love labs, but haven’t really been around Akitas, so I was pretty curious to see what these little pups would look like.  We arrived to find a pretty beat up apartment and went upstairs to one of the bedrooms to find a big litter of black and white spotted pups that were about five weeks old.  There was one brown and black pup that stuck out like a sore thumb.  She came right over to me and that was that.  We paid the owner a small fee and were off with our little lady. 

On the car ride home, as she cowered in a towel on my lap, Dave and I discussed a name for our little one.  Many names were thrown out: names of players from the Chicago Cubs, family member names, some strange Spanish names (I think Dave really wanted Tatiana), but still nothing quite fit.  We finally brought up places we wanted to live, and after a long harsh Virginia winter, some California sunshine sounded good for everyone in the truck.  It was then we settled on Cali.

 Our new pup was officially part of the family.

So that’s how Cali came into our world.  The name “Cali” to be a bit of a premonition, as only three months later Cali was off on her first big adventure all the way across the country to San Diego. These days, Cali enjoys swimming at Dog Beach, chewing on everything she can, playing fetch, and stealing various items to get attention from her parents.

Dave:
Why would I agree to add such a crazy thing to my life?  Well, I ask myself that question almost every day.  But then that dirty, hairy, troublemaker makes me smile, and then she makes Felicia smile, and I can’t ask for much more than that out of anything.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy more of Feebs’s and my crazy Cali stories in the coming months–we definitely have tons to tell.