Maggie

Well, I made the number one mistake today that you should never, never make with kids. The girls and I have been talking about getting a puppy, a little pet therapy I guess. Tonight, I did not want to come home after dinner, some nights I just find myself wanting to be away from the house, not facing the memories and feelings. So, what do I do? I take the girls to the pet store, we start looking at puppies. I saw one puppy, a weimenweiner(sp??) and I thought, oh....Joel(I wanted to get this dog, but I knew it would be to hard to look at daily). I don't know what it is about that breed of dogs, but every time I see that breed, the nose. the eyes and the hair color remind me of Joel. I told him this once, shortly before his death and I remember his response like it was yesterday, "what a compliment, I look like a dog" I laughed and said, "no hon, a very beautiful dog looks like you!" Another comical moment on the phone. Anyways, as I was looking at that dog, I saw this little cocker spaniel in the back and she was so darn cute, with little chocolate/tan spots. I asked to see her, and they brought her out, that was the end of it, the girls had to have her, so did I. I asked the girls wanted they wanted to name her, Faith of course said, Erica. This is a name that she has used for all of her dolls for a long time. Joel and I used to joke about it, saying that she adapted it from his middle name, Eric. I frequently called him Joel Eric in front of the girls, so they knew papa's "whole name". She has started using it a lot more since Joel passed. I almost let her name her that, but it was to hard and it just did not flow for a dog name. So we came up with Maggie, we thought it went well with Max(our golden retreiver). So far Maggie has been good for all of us, including Max, but especially for the girls and for me tonight too.