meet cooper

Two months ago, Gregg and I took a plunge on our dream of getting a puppy, and it’s been exciting and stressful, messy and blissful. A total roller coaster, from “we got a puppy!” to “what are we doing?” to “how could we have ever lived without Cooper?”

Just four months ago, I had no idea this would be in the cards for us. Though Gregg and I have had the itch to get a puppy for a while now, it wasn’t on our radar as anything that would happen anytime soon. There were a million reasons why, but mostly: we both work long hours, and typically are away from home, and I’ve always loved to hop on a plane and travel whenever I got a chance. Then a few months ago, it dawned us that, none of those reasons existed in the moment.

Along with the pandemic came a new level of flexibility; no longer did we have to travel to the office, obligations outside of work quickly diminished, and the ability to travel had almost entirely gone away. Suddenly, we questioned why we weren’t doing something we had been talking about for a while.

So we researched different types of dog breeds and their personalities, got on PetFinder, looked at our work schedules in the long-term, and figured out if we could make it work. It was both scary and energizing- dogs are a lot of work, and neither of us had any meaningful experience with training or taking care of a dog or anything besides ourselves for that matter. And yet, we knew this was worth exploring.

There were several dogs that we had found online that looked like they could make a good addition, and there was one we had even gotten our hearts set on. We ended up applying for six dogs over the course of a month and received rejections for all six of them. Each time we got an automatic reply that the animal shelter found the dog a home that was a “better fit.”

We were starting to get disheartened with the process and to reenergize ourselves decided to spend one free Saturday afternoon popping into a pet store in Brooklyn just looking at some puppies. When we walked in they told us they had only one puppy left, and it was a beagle. We decided to take a look, and from the moment we spotted Cooper we were sold. His floppy ears melted our hearts, and when we held him in the pet store, he instantly calmed down. Since we had not gone into the store that day with any serious intention of buying a dog (we had always planned to adopt), we decided to think about it over lunch. After talking through all the pros and cons over Mexican food and with a little liquid courage from a margarita we decided that the pros outweighed the cons.

Here we are now a couple of months later, welcoming fall with our quickly growing puppy. The first couple of months with Cooper have had a lot of high highs, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that there have been lows along the way as we try to teach a puppy who is exploring a whole new world and testing the boundaries along the way. We’ve celebrated wins (he’s been successfully pottytrained for a few weeks now!) and challenges (like a puppy who loves walking on the kitchen table and running around the house with my shoes in his mouth).

In Haley Nahman’s recent newsletter, called “In favor of recklessness,” she talks about the need to do something that feels crazy once in awhile:

“I am careful and thoughtful, risk-averse and self-disciplined. In some ways these are points of pride, and yet all of my favorite decisions track almost perfectly with times I’ve railed against these qualities within myself… As a result I’ve become increasingly enamored with the idea that recklessness is inherent to a life fully lived. It’s an appealing yet threatening idea, because it takes my biggest fear—that through my own carelessness I will suffer unnecessarily—and posits that suffering is worth it.”

There have been so many changes that have come in the world and my life since the pandemic began, the best of which has been adding Cooper to the family. Nothing beats a long walk with your four-legged friend on a fresh, fall morning. Or seeing the joy on his face when he is free in the dog park. Even relaxing at home feels better in Cooper’s company. Cooper has repaid the love I give him ten-fold and has become one of my favorite decisions.