Week 5: narrative

"How 'bout a Doberman?" Brad asked with a big grin on his face.
I sighed. "We can't get some intimidating breed, the asshole neighbors will give us hell," I replied.
I had asked him what he wanted for Valentine's day, and before any words had come out of his mouth, I already knew the answer. A dog. Brad had his heart set on adopting a greyhound, as he was in love with that breed type, particularly whippets as his long-time companion, Stella, had been one. I however, was not so fond of them. Let's face it, they look emaciated and weird. Plus, from my research, they weren't the greatest with kids. I'd spent plenty of time discussing dogs with Brad, trying to sway him into wanting a different breed, and clearly, I had some more swaying to do.
Attempting to find a compromise, I started looking on the internet for puppies. In our search, I stopped and browsed  Boxers. Brad wasn't terribly impressed with their appearance, until a white one scrolled across the webpage.
"What is THAT?" asked Brad. "I want one of those!"
Great. It's always like this. He is one of those  'oh, shiny!' people that can't seem to help themselves. But, this actually happened to be something agreeable. While looking around for white boxer pups, we discovered that breeders often cull, or kill, white pups at birth as they are considered undesirable and have a higher rate of deafness as well as some other defects. This just tipped the scales completely. Puppies being killed because they aren't the right color or because they may be deaf, that just pulled his heartstrings.
"They are the outcasts? We have to save one," Brad said while pouting at me.
Just like that. As if it were always so, Brad was determined to have a white boxer. Obviously, I didn't feel terribly opposed to the idea. I found myself more appealed by the fawn boxers, but I didn't feel the need to be racist. A boxer is a boxer is a boxer. So, this set off over a weeks worth of internet searching for puppies that were for sale, information on the breed, and videos of boxers doing silly and/or smart things.
The overwhelming amount of bookmarks that accumulated over the week consisted purely of Boxer breeders with pups for sale. Surprisingly, white pups were neither hard to find, nor any less pricey than their standard colored counterparts. We had compiled a list of several hopefuls, and arranged them in order from most wanted to least. In the time spent acquiring the bookmarks, I had my fill of puppies of any sort, I was sick of looking at them, sick of emailing people about them, sick of it all. And, worst of all, it couldn't just be decided and done, we were waiting to have the money to make the purchase.
A few days after making the 'list', checks came, and it was time to decide. We called about Brads first pick, a pup named Comet that, though he wasn't a white pup, looked like he had been stitched together like Frankestein's monster. Unfortunately, Comet had found a home the night before. So, my first pick was the next up. A white pup called "Patch"- how ridiculously predictable. He had a black patch over one eye. In the pictures we had seen of him he must have only been 4-5 weeks old, his head was too large for his body and his face resembled that of a manatee. According to the listing, he was just turning 8 weeks, and that meant he'd be ready to go to a home immediately.
I had emailed the breeder about "Patch" the day before, and she said she would email new pictures of him once she got home. Brad called, and was happy to find that the pup was still available, and that the breeder was willing to ship him to us. Let me just say, the idea of shipping a puppy is not a thrilling one to me, I can only imagine how frightening it must be for them, but in my search for puppies I found only 2 boxer breeders in Maine, one had no pups available and the other wanted $1500 for their white pup. Sorry, that is just too much. So, our puppy search had been drastically narrowed down by whether the breeder was willing to ship the puppy or not.
The breeder told Brad she would email us the new pictures, and then we could decide if we definitely wanted him or not. She sent the photos to my email, and as soon as I opened them I knew what the answer would be. I showed them to Brad.
"Oh my god, that is just STUPID CUTE. Yes, he is the one. It hurts to look at him," Brad uttered while staring at the pictures.
Okay. Finally. I'm glad that's settled. Now I can stop browsing puppies I thought.
Brad called the breeder back and confirmed that "Patch" was definitely what we wanted and inquired about what we needed to do in order to pay for him and get him here. The breeder said she uses Continental Airlines due to the fact that they have air conditioning in the live animal cargo, and that they feed/water the animals at stops. She knew exactly how much it would cost to ship, and as soon as payment was confirmed, she would go about getting him reserved on a flight to come to us.
This didn't work out as smoothly as we'd hoped. Apparently Continental doesn't fly to Bangor, which meant having to drive to Portland to pick the pup up at 7pm. Great trip with 2 irritable kids in tow. Ugh.
Neither Brad nor I were too pleased with this, but if it was the only way to get him to us, what could we do. So, he was bought and paid for, and according to the breeder, would fly out and arrive Monday. We waited to here from her, and waited. And waited. Finally, we contacted her, only to find out that she had "missed" the flight, and that the next one was booked, so he wouldn't be flying out until Tuesday. All this waiting was driving Brad mad, which in turn was driving me mad as well.
Tuesday morning we got the airway bill number from the breeder. "Patch" was on his way. Finally.
It was the longest day, ever. Brad has very little patience on a good day, and when waiting for something he wants, even less. The kids knew what was going on and were antsy and kept asking when we were going to the airport. Like, every 15 minutes, one of them would appear asking when we were going to leave, which infuriated Brad who was already grouchy from his lack of patience. We made sure we had the necessities for the puppy, both at the house and to bring with us for the car ride. We killed time as best we could, trying to not go crazy waiting to leave. By 4:45pm I'd had enough of waiting and decided it was time to go. We could stop for something to eat on the way, and still get there on time.
Of course, nothing goes as planned. It wasn't bad enough that we had been driving around with a broken door for months (and finally this had been scheduled to be fixed.. for a nominal fee, and not until AFTER our drive to Portland of course), that needed to be held closed with a damn bungee cord, but recently we had a slow leak in one of the tires, and put on the "full sized spare" which turned out to be a smaller size than the rest of the tires. We had just had the tires rotated, and the "spare" was put on the back, which is the only thing I can think of to account for the trouble we encountered on our drive to Portland. 
After about 30 miles on the highway, it felt like the "spare" was lifting off the road and then when it went back to hitting the road, the jeep would pull to the right. This went on intermittently the whole way down, more often when I went the speed limit, less if I drove like an old woman who couldn't see over the steering wheel. Fun times.
Needless to say, along with the near-heart-attack-causing veering of the vehicle and Brads ever present impatience, the children asked on a seemingly regular basis, " Are we almost there? We've been in the car for HOURS." Each time this was asked it was either met by Brads I'd prefer to pretend you aren't here, so don't talk again attitude, or by my never pleasing answer of "Not even close," which was then met with grunts and grumbles of displeasure from the occupants in the back seat. 
We hit Portland around 7:30pm, and made a beeline for the Airport. If the flight had come in on time, it meant the puppy had been waiting for us for 15+ minutes, after being stuck in a crate and flown from here to there and god knows where since 6am. We parked in the temp parking garage, Brad got out and lit a cigarette. Meanwhile, I searched for my wallet with my ID in it. By the time I found it, and the kids had both gotten out of the jeep, Brad had managed to smoke 2/3rd's of his cigarette. I finally stepped out and lit my own, just as Brad decided that he had waited long enough. He threw down his cigarette, stepped on it, and proceeded to head towards the entrance of the airport.
"Uh, babe... excuse me, but I'd like to have more than 2 drags off this..." I said while looking at him pleadingly.
"Sorry," he replied, and stopped walking away from me.
At this point, the children were having some sort of conversation among themselves, though after driving for 3 hours both my ass and my brain were asleep, so I couldn't make out much of it aside from it seemed to be about the soon-to-be-in-our-home puppy. Brad impatiently glared at me, which meant it was time to start walking or be left behind.
In we went. 
"Nice. We came in right at the Continental counter area," Brad said enthusiastically.
"I need to pee," I replied.
"Me too!" the children chimed in simultaneously.
There was Brads grumpy, you've got to be kidding expression. But then he added, "So do I."
Damn straight we get a bathroom break BEFORE picking up the puppy. Who is going to lug a puppy in a crate into an airport bathroom? Not me. That's for sure. After we all returned from the bathroom, we headed straight to the Continental ticket counter. There was a young man standing at it, looking distracted, as if his shift was just about over. After about 2 minutes, he finally glared up at me from his cell phone.
"Can I help you?"
"I have a puppy to pick up..." I replied.
"Oh, he's been crying waiting for you," the man said accusingly.
He excused himself momentarily, into a backroom, and reappeared a moment later with a medium size crate, covered with 'this way up' and 'live animal' stickers. There was whimpering and movement coming from inside. He sat the crate on the floor in front of us, and we got to see our new puppy in person for the first time.
A tiny, white, and covered with water, puppy was jumping excitedly in the crate, begging to be let out. 
"Oh my god, he's stupid cute!" Brad exclaimed.
The children kneeled down and gave the pup some attention while I signed the necessary forms at the counter. And, just like that, we were now the proud owners of a white purebred Boxer pup, who we had decided to name Fester.




end note- I could add how the trip home went, with the frequent stops for 'potty breaks' and the even more frequent complaining from the children. Or how the next few days played out with a new puppy in the house that has 2 resident spoiled Siamese cats. But I won't. That story is still going on, as we are now on day 6 with Fester. So, perhaps another time.