Nov 3, 2020 3 min read

A friend of mine always says, “You should have a dog and a spare.” Her theory is the second dog helps ease the hurt if and when you lose the other one.

I’ll agree.

We were fortunate to have Travis, our 2-year old mountain cur, when we lost our beloved Brick a couple months ago. His love, companionship and antics have eased many grief-stricken days.

After about five weeks of having only one dog, our daughter started sending us pictures of a puppy that she had fallen in love with and wanted to bring home. We said “no” for nearly a week before all of the cute puppy pics wore us down and we let her.

It took another few days for us to come up with a name. My husband thought that, since you need spare tires as well as spare dogs, we could call him Cooper. It fit him much better than Kelly, and especially more than Goodyear.

We’re struggling through all of the normal puppy-related struggles, like housebreaking and crate training. When he uses the potty outside, we have little parties where we praise him and rub him all over. I like to tell him he is, “Cooper the Super Pooper.”

We thoroughly enjoy him during the day, but I am not going to pretend that the nights aren’t hard. It is like having a newborn baby, getting up every few hours to take him out. Worse, sometimes he thinks it is time to play when we come back inside. It is almost like he doesn’t understand that I have to go to work the next day and can’t nap the morning away like he often does.

When he cries in the crate at night, we stand nearby – silently – until he is quiet for one or two seconds and then we quickly whisper what a good boy he is. Sometimes it takes a while, but we are generally able to calm him in this way.

Travis has slowly begun to warm up to him.

They snuggle on a thick blanket and nap together. They play together in the yard during our many outings for Cooper. And he suffers patiently and silently as Cooper chews on his legs, tail and jowls. Perhaps he remembers trailing after Brick doing the same things when he first joined our family.

Cooper has some medical issues, namely a half a dozen seizures last week that scared us nearly to death. A trip to the ER and a day’s monitoring have indicated he will likely require blood work and medication for the rest of his life. We can certainly handle that better than watching any more seizures.

Those are painful for everyone involved.

We will get through the puppy stage like we have all the other times before. Eventually we will get to sleep through the night again. And, God willing, we will have both our dog and our spare, for years to come.