Future Talk

Humor me for a minute and let's play a game. In this game, you go away from home for 8 weeks-missing lots, learning lots, becoming lots-but if you do it all right, you get a prize. The prize could be anything. What do you want? A car? All of your textbooks paid for for fall semester? It's a game, so you can let your imagination run wild.

How about a puppy?

I am a sucker for puppies.

I'll take the puppy. Thanks. 

That was a fun game.

Or maybe it wasn't a game.

But, as per usual, I've gotten ahead of myself.

A couple of months ago, I decided that as part of my honor thesis that I will be working on this coming school year, I was going to get a dog and train it for therapy purposes. I am a huge dog person (since 3rd grade, the one consistent plan I have always had for my future is to run in the Iditarod someday...), but my mom has always said that it is cruel to get a dog before you have a backyard. She was smart enough to know that since I have never lived without a dog in all of my nineteen years, I would probably wind up with one as soon as I started college, no matter how impractical it would be to raise a puppy in a dorm room bathroom. Well, then I lived at home my first year of college and had this brilliant idea that maybe I should live at home another year, because Mom never said that the backyard that I have to have to have a dog had to be different than the one that I have always had. Yeah, when I told her that, she looked at me the same way you just looked at that sentence when you reread it to count all the "have"s. 

But, that didn't stop her from accompanying me to an Australian Shepard breeder today, where we proceeded to pet Aussies for an hour and a half. We met Amy and Abe, the parents-to-be next week, as well as Colleen and Dick Wilson, the sweetest couple who have been in the business for a very long time.  We did lots of Googling and research to ask all the right questions when meeting a breeder, but honestly, I was sold within about 10 minutes. You know how I told you I am a sucker for puppies earlier? Well, turns out I am also a sucker for old people who raise dogs with as much love as their children and grandchildren and pronounce the nation's capital like "WARshington." Apparently my mom felt the same way, because as soon as we got back in the car, gone was the skepticism, replaced with "Maybe when you really move out, we'll get one too." 

So, with only 10 days left before my trip, this is no time for fun and games. 

Let's get serious.

On May 25th, I leave for Hungary, Romania, and Benin.

On July 20th, I get home.

On July 21st, I get a puppy.

=D=D=D=D=D=D=D

For the honor and glory.