Kevin and I had been engaged for about three months, and he had just gotten his new job (meaning no more travel!), when we started to get fur baby fever. We knew we wanted a dog that would be good with kids (one day), have a sweet disposition, be fairly easy to train and do well as an inside dog in our town house with a small backyard. We began researching dog breeds and perusing the Internet to see what was out there when we came across the cutest little corgi we had ever seen.
I think it was love at first sight. We e-mailed Troy's owner and to make a long story short we decided it wasn't the right time because we were going out of town to a wedding that weekend. A few weeks later when things started to slow down, we were still talking about Troy so we got back on puppyfind.com and much to our excitement he was still available. Kevin called and talked to his owner, and we arranged to meet them at a gas station in Livingston, Alabama that coming weekend. We went to Petco and loaded up on dog supplies, a crate, toys, bones, a dog bed etc. and anxiously awaited Sunday afternoon. Looking back, we should have been puppy proofing our house, but oh well, you live and you learn.
On Sunday afternoon, we piled into Kevin's Milan and that was the day our lives changed forever. We met his owners in Livingston and knew he was a perfect fit. We didn't really have a name picked out, but when I was calling him "Troy" his owners thought I was saying "Charlie." We thought about it, and Charlie seemed like a good strong name, and eventually Charlie turned to Charles, Chuck and the many different variations of Charlie he responds to today. He sat in my lap the whole way back to Birmingham and was a perfect angel. I don't think he barked for the first four days he lived with us. Little did we know how spunky the little guy would turn out to be when he adjusted to his new home.
So here we are a year later, and we honestly can't remember what our life was like before Charles became a part of our family. I can't count the number of pairs of shoes he has eaten, the number of socks that now have holes in them, or the number of times he has darted out the door and provided the whole neighborhood entertainment as he engages Kevin and I in his "corgi" games. I'm sure you are thinking what kind of morons continue to leave things on the floor when they have a dog who chews, but bringing a fur baby into the home was an adjustment for everyone and it took us all a little time. We're still learning. We have had our share of frustrating moments for sure (like when we thought Charles was doing well with potty training during a power outage and really he was peeing on the fireplace and we just couldn't see it or when I took him to Rascal Day at school and he growled and barked all during class making me feel like an unfit parent whose child was having a temper tantrum in the grocery store), but those moments are far outweighed by the joy and happiness we experience everyday when we pull into the driveway and two little brown eyes are anxiously peering at us from the window, when he snuggles up on the couch and snores ever so softly and when he hears the word "walk" and dashes over to the door to wait for his leash.
Below is a photo dump of some of our favorite Charles moments from this past year
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