Tales from a Hopeless Romantic: 2023 in Review: Fur Babies

Time to continue my top three moments for my 2023. These are in no particular order. You can read about my trip to Gold Bar, Washington by clicking here.

For some context on this next post, I'm going to back up to Thanksgiving 2022. We said good-bye to our sweet dog, Stevie, who had lung cancer and was no longer able to sleep or eat. With Stevie gone, we were without a dog for the first time since 2007. I wasn't sure how long we'd be without a dog as part of the family, and then one day Benji said, "You know what I miss? Having a dog excited to see me when I get home."

Benji expressed wanting a Pug he could name Donut, and Will shared his desire for a Corgi he could name Edward. Around the end of January I started following various rescues and checked city shelters almost daily. Going to a breeder is not an option for us. Every dog I've ever owned (as a child or now) was a rescue or adoption of some sort, and even with such specific requests I planned to keep it this way.

You know how sometimes you get a feeling and you just know something is meant to be? Around February, I saw a post on DFW Pug Rescue of a lil guy named Odis:

It only took one look. It was undeniably clear to me at that moment that we had to adopt this dog. Within a week, he was ours and renamed Donut:

I continued to watch the rescues over the new few months for Corgis. This seemed a more difficult task as many of the available Corgis needed to be the only dog in the family. Then around October I saw a post for Miss Mayhem (Sugar) on Forget Me Not Rescue - Texas's page. The name "Miss Mayhem" intrigued me, so I reached out and 48 hours later...

She was initially a little mischievous, but nothing the Croupes couldn't handle. Additionally, she is two-years-old like Donut! Their dynamic was my main concern. However, I had nothing to worry about. There are times they both get the zoomies and it is pretty nuts watching them run around the living room and kitchen, but in the end they are both super sweet dogs. Oh, and instead of renaming her Edward (which I told Will I was fine with since we'd had a Freddie and Stevie who were both female dogs), the boys chose to call her Biscuit in keeping with a British feel while matching Donut. By Thanksgiving 2023, we were a complete family.