Life With Puppies

I've often said that dogs are about the purest expression of unconditional love around. So you'd think that having two puppies at home would be twice the unconditional love, right?

Well, sorta kinda, but not really. You see, Margo and I have never had more than one dog at a time. And when there's one dog at home, all that love and affection is focused on its masters. It lives to be happy, to have fun, to serve, to explore and discover, to eat (!), to snuggle, and to share its love with you.

But with two puppies, I'm seeing that sometimes all that love and attention is focused on each other rather than us. Our puppies love to play! They wrestle and chase each other, steal tennis balls and bones from each other, hide under furniture and bait each other to scrap. They get noisy and frenzied, and they're obviously having a blast.

However, all that attention they show each other doesn't diminish the unconditional love they show us. When I walk in the door at the end of the day, it warms my heart to see their ears pull back as they burst forth in a full-on charge to welcome me. They love to snuggle up on our laps, to be scratched and nuzzled, to walk and run and play just as if we were great big puppies like them.

Oh, sure, sometimes their unconditional love is a challenge. The other night we decided to let Rose sleep in our bed. Several times during the night I woke up to have her up on my pillow, pressing against my face the way she would when she sleeps with her sister. At one point, she even climbed right on top of my face (which is a starting way to wake up, by the way!).

All-in-all, we're having a great time with these guys. They're adorable. And the truth is that there's plenty of that unconditional love to go around.