Gulf Coast Family

It's always exciting when you can bring home a new member of the family. I'll never forget our first addition. We were young, in love, and had been married for just over a year. Our little guy was so small that he could fit in the palm of my hand, but his personality was larger than life. He was as cute as he could be with adorable brown eyes and the floppiest ears I've ever seen. That's right, we were the proud parents of a puppy. And not just any puppy, but more specifically a beagle pup. Our home would never be the same again.

Before we brought Mr. Peanut home to join our family, we had determined that he would be an outdoor dog. We would let him in occasionally, but he would sleep and eat outdoors. However, within minutes of pulling into our driveway, we had not only let him into the house, but we had handed over full reign of the kitchen, the living room, and even the couch. He looked at us with his sad, pleading eyes, and we decided that he could sleep in our room on the floor just for tonight.

At about midnight, we decided that he could sleep on our bed just for tonight.

At about five minutes after midnight, he was contentedly sleeping on my pillow, and I never got it back.

The next morning, when I took my shower, Peanut was sure that he had been abandoned; so he sat outside the tub and whimpered the entire time. But after a few weeks, he realized that when I stepped into the shower, I was going to be there for a while. So he found a new way of entertaining himself - taking clothes out of the hamper (usually underwear) and dragging them out to the living room and behind the couch where he would chew on them for a while.

On one occasion, I came out to the living room to find Peanut chewing on a pair of my wife's underwear in the middle of the room (instead of behind the couch). I repeatedly instructed him to drop them, but for some strange reason, he wouldn't follow my instructions that day. So I reached out to take them by force. But he didn't want to give them up, so he swallowed them whole!

The next thing I knew, we were rushing Peanut to the veterinarian. A couple hours and a few hundred dollars later, the underwear was safely extracted from Peanut s stomach, and we were headed back home. We decided at that point that we might need to just bite the bullet and buy a clothes hamper that had a lid on it. Of course it was only a few months before Peanut had learned how to lift the lid with his nose. But at least he never swallowed anything else (that we know of)!

Over the course of the next few years, Peanut truly was our little one. We spent all our free time playing with him, we took him everywhere we went, and no matter what was happening in our lives he remained steadfast and was always there for us.

While things did change a little bit when our first child came along, Peanut's loyalty and love remained boundless. As our children grew, Peanut continued to entertain us all. Our children have learned a lot from him. They learned responsibility, compassion and even self-esteem as they learned how to take care of Peanut. But for my wife and for me, Peanut not only prepared us for having a family, but he also showed us through his unconditional love that he was one of the family!