How My Stupid-Playdoh-Eating-Dog Improved My Marriage

Puppies are seriously a pain in the butt. Golden retrievers are incredibly sweet, but they are also puppies for-evah.  Since we are less than 10 months into this journey, we’ve got a lot of puppy-time left.

What does this have to do with marriage?  I’m getting to it, I’m getting to it…

So, last night, said pup managed to nab himself 2 fist-sized hunks of homemade play doh. Upside – I knew it was non-toxic. Downside – knew it contained a lot of salt.  Hmmm…. Pup was a bit whiny all evening and thirsty.  I had no idea what was in store.  Long story short he drank copious amounts of water and had no control of his bladder. L This resulted in multiple accidents in the house – including IN his crate – and general ‘awakeness’ all night.  Poor guy.

But I didn’t really know all that until this morning.  Why you might ask?  Because my wonderful husband let me sleep through ALL of it.  He got up with Perry and stayed up until after 2 a.m., letting Perry drink (and hopefully flush this out of his system), cleaning up the resulting accidents, letting him out… When he peed in his crate at 3 a.m., it was Mark who cleaned it up, while I stared around bleary-eyed and confused before passing back out. 

Seriously, let’s think about this.  Here’s a guy that has to get up for work the same as I do – in fact, he starts work at 7 a.m. Then he comes home, gets the kids off the bus and manages homework duties, picks up kids from sports practice (2 separate trips) and starts dinner, all before I get home at 5:30.  

He and I were both exhausted last night, but stayed awake long enough to plow through another round of adoption training webnairs and quizzes.  I fell quickly asleep however.  Instead of sharing the load, which would have been completely appropriate, he wanted to let me sleep.  I know some might think that this is over-doing credit. After all, it’s one night sleep right?  But it is so much more than that. It’s just an example of who he is and how he takes care of his family.  He is such an incredible husband and father.

And sometimes it takes a stupid-playdoh-eating-dog to remind me of that.