I have been meaning to do this post forever.  It is way overdue:

We all know when kids enter the picture, pets tend to take backstage.  No matter what you may have thought before having kids or how awesome your relationship with your pets may be, things change and there is nothing you can do about it.

Like many young couples, our dog Hayden was our first baby.  We used to talk about him over dinner, take vacations with him, and love him…lots.   He was my running buddy for years.  He was an amazing companion through the rough days of my pregnancy and bedrest.

Triplets change a lot of things.  Friends, leisure, perspective, life.  The first few months of raising triplets was so much harder than I could ever have imagined.  People say during the first year with multiples you are in “survival mode”. I’m not exaggerating, that is exactly how it felt to me.  Hayden was far from center stage, he was also just surviving in our household.

Except Hayden was center stage with our amazing neighbors.  I’m not a huge believer in random coincidences and the story of how we ended up with the neighbors we did is no crazy coincidence.  We actually wanted to purchase the house our neighbors now live in.  The timing wasn’t right for us, it was for them, Miss Gail and her husband got the house. A few months later, we randomly (except it wasn’t random) sold our house (that wasn’t even on the market at the time) and saw the house two down from Miss Gail’s house just went on the market.  We swooped in and became neighbors with Miss Gail.

Miss Gail and her husband recently lost a dear dog prior to moving East.  They were dog-less dog lovers. They would come over and walk Hayden, take him to their house to visit, and love on him daily.  Miss Gail’s house became Hayden’s second home and we couldn’t have been more grateful.

Hayden has a very sweet temperament but we had an incident in the past where he showed aggresive behavior to a toddler.  Since this incident, I have always been on my toes with him and kids.  When our kids first began rolling around, we saw Hayden display a few instances of  aggressive behavior with our children.  With one child, I may have been able to make some modifications to keep Hayden and the kids separated.  With three, forget it!  The solution was simple, we would see if Miss Gail would be interested in adopting Hayden.  She welcomed him with open arms.

And so our role in Hayden’s life evolved. On his way to where he was suppose to be, we enjoyed his company immensely.   We still visit with him regularly (he lives two houses down remember) and see the beauty our circumstances with our neighbors has had.  Words can’t describe how thankful we are. Here are a few facebook status updates from Hayden’s new companion:

“How many dogs in the neighborhood get told to get up on mom and dad’s bed and stay there?”

“Hayden passed his dance class with flying colors. His opening move wowwed the instructor. He improvised for his closing move and just stood there and barked at me. He did great considering he pretty much refused to do any training all week. Will post the video of it once we get it!”

Now, just look at the pictures below of Hayden at his new home.  The amazing story of how we ended up with the neighbors we did is certainly no coincidence.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 7:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.