For much of my late elementary school and early middle school years, I (along with my siblings) begged my parents for a dog. Everyone had dogs, except us – or so it seemed.

Convincing my dad that we needed a dog was easy. After all, he loved dogs, had grown up with dogs, and really wanted one himself.

Convincing my mom, though? An entirely different matter.

Where my dad told us tales of the pet wiener dog eating so much spaghetti his stomach dragged on my ground, my mom’s dog stories often involved the dog Nuisance, whose name was well-deserved.

Put simply, my mom has always been, and will always be, more of a cat person than a dog person. It’s not that she doesn’t like dogs, she just prefers a cat around the house. And, at the time of all this begging, we already had a cat – Findow – along with a gaggle of birds, hamsters and other assorted creatures. My mom was perfectly content with the pet situation as it was (OK, maybe not content – she would have preferred fewer animals around the house – but at least OK with the situation).

The rest of us? Not so much.

And so, I did everything in my pre-teen power to get the dog. Whenever I had a penny to throw in a fountain, I wished for a dog. Every Christmas, I hoped to find a dog bedecked in a ribbon under the tree. Every time I blew out the candles on a birthday cake or the seeds off of a dandelion, I wished for a dog.

When wishing and begging failed, promises that would inevitably be broken were made.

“I’ll walk him twice…no, three times!…a day.”

“I’ll always feed him.”

“I’ll clean up after him every time he has an accident.”

My mom, unable to convince me to so much as clean my absurdly messy bedroom, didn’t buy any of this.

Thankfully, my dad finally discovered her weakness. An expensive weakness, mind you, but a weakness nonetheless: He offered to buy her a hot tub in exchange for a dog.

Which is how we found ourselves shortly thereafter at the humane society, enamored with a dog who was already on his third trip to the shelter at the ripe old age of four months – Sundance.

It’s also how we found ourselves with a hot tub.

As it turned out, my dad had discovered one simple step to getting a dog. It just happened to be a very expensive step.

The infamous Sundance. Not pictured: the infamous hot tub which secured his presence in our home.
The infamous Sundance. Not pictured: the infamous hot tub which secured his presence in our home.