It’s true love for puppy Isla Bacon

Welcoming a little black bundle of joy

You know the song, |“And they called it puppy love, oh I guess they’ll never know” . . . and so it goes. I guess I never knew that sometimes it’s not puppy love; well, not initially, anyway.

Right in amongst the crazy month of September, right in the middle of my bereavement and Covid, a little black bundle of joy, Isla Bacon (Yes. The boys wanted to name her Bacon, so we compromised) bowled right into our family. She’s a black lab puppy and she’s a joy — but it took me a while to see the joy.

In my later years, I have finally come to realise that every now and then I am afflicted by anxiety. I always just thought it was nerves. In fact, that’s probably what we’ve called it ever since I was a child. Now that I think about it, I got nervous quite often. But I just put it down to “nerves”.

When this little puppy joined our family, I thought I was prepared for the sleepless nights. We forked out $50 and bought a pet toy in the shape of a sheep — it has a beating heart inside it to mimic the mother’s heartbeat. Well, that was a complete waste of money, as you might have guessed. She howled, barked and cried all night. I also howled and cried all night. Night two will be better, I thought. No; it was worse. And then my body started reacting. I was having very negative thoughts about why we even got a puppy — how was I going to tell the boys we were giving her back, this was a huge mistake, etc.

I couldn’t eat or sleep, my nerves were fraught. Each night in the leadup to bed-time, I felt like vomiting. I remember it was exactly the same when the boys were babies — just that worry about whether they would sleep, and if they didn’t, how I was going to cope through the next day. It was awful.

Then one night, she went straight into her crate and went to sleep. I didn’t sleep, of course, thinking she was going to wake up at any minute. But she didn’t. And every night since then, she has done the same.

So now, she is the cutest, most gorgeous, crazy, clever puppy, and I finally get the term “puppy love”. I just don’t love her chewing my shoes, the phone charger, the couch, the wood basket, socks, undies . . .

Make sure to tune in to Adam Green and Megan Banks on The Hits Hawke’s Bay from 6am to 9am, Monday to Friday