Playing with their favorite toys
So, I haven’t mentioned them much because I’m a little self conscious about my two best friends being non-human. I talk to them. They sit on the furniture. Heck, they even sleep in the bed when DH is gone, I’ll admit it. They are our first “kids” and DH secretly loves how they light up when he walks in the door after work. After a 14 hour day away, they leap and prance and vocalize and follow him around the house like he’s the freaking prodigal son, and he eats it up. Now, they miss him. We noticed that they reacted just like the chaplain said children would with deployments–I guess our dogs are Army brats. They know what a green duffel bag means and they follow commands.
This is our first dog Saber. He’s a three year old Chow Chow mix. He was rescued from feral and probably abused as a puppy, so he’s even more skittish and shy than Chows normally can be. He spends a lot of time hiding under our bed.
Handsome boy
He’ll share the man chair with DH sometimes but really, he’s a momma’s boy. He’s more afraid of men, so he gravitates toward me and I’m thrilled about that. He feels like a big warm teddy bear. He’s definitely a lover not a fighter, it’s how he survived on the streets. His favorite thing ever is squeezing into my chair with me to watch Northwestern and the Cowboys play football, even when I yell (which I do a lot the last few seasons). He definitely likes my teams better, he doesn’t stick around for West Point or Nebraska. Like I said, Momma’s boy.
Football watching buddy doesn’t judge me when I drink Bud and don’t wear makeup
On the other hand, our four year old terrier mix Ranger is DH’s ranger buddy, no question. We rescued him from a kill shelter just weeks before he was going to be put down, and I absolutely cannot imagine a world in which he doesn’t exist. It’s almost as if he knows DH saved his life by giving me the go-ahead to adopt him. He actually got pretty depressed when DH left, he wouldn’t play with me, he was just curled up in a ball under his desk looking pathetic and not eating. He’s gotten better but man, that was heartbreaking.
Loves coffee time
Now, he wants to snuggle with me 24/7. Every time I sit he climbs up in my lap, and at night he sleeps next to me on DH’s pillow. We used to have order and discipline in this household, but with the deployment, Ranger would wait until I was asleep and sneak up the far side of the bed and slowly sneak up on me to snuggle. I didn’t have the heart to kick him out if I woke up in the middle of the night because my arm was on pins and needles from him sleeping literally on my arm. Things just slid from there. He’s a little too smart for his own good. And he is a fantastic guard dog. He is 19 lbs of pure fierce when he senses a threat to our home. His idea of threats are kind of funny, including a new UPS guy, shenanigans halfway down the block, a deer wandering too close to our fence, and his favorite threat to scare off, the Chinooks that routinely fly over our back yard. I’ll have to take video some time of him telling a Chinook who’s boss.
He really does love coffee time
Together, Saber and Ranger are the Odd Couple. Their love/hate relationship and spirited antics bring joy to my day, and their snuggles are much appreciated when DH is so far from home.
armylife•diywife 