Tony and I wanted a dog for years, but it was never the right time. First we were dating long distance. Then the first apartment we shared in Morgantown, West Virginia didn’t allow pets, and was also roughly the size of a welcome mat. Even once we moved to Columbus and had a bit more space, we either had a calendar full of weekend trips planned or we couldn’t comfortably afford the start-up costs of a crate, a pet deposit, vet bills, adoption fees, and whatever other hidden expenses loomed once we pulled the trigger.
By June 2022, we were tentatively ready but still taking it slow — we spent our evenings swiping through the PetFinder app, texted Columbus Humane listings to each other throughout our workdays, and constantly eyed the few hundred bucks that finally sat waiting in a savings account for when we found the one. We knew a few things. 1) We didn’t want a puppy — we were in the middle of wedding planning and frankly were not willing to invite the chaos that would ensue. 2) We would be adopting from a shelter, not shopping. 3) We preferred a dog that wasn’t teensy tiny, but wasn’t so big that he was bouncing off the walls in our still-not-that-big apartment. And then, as we laid in bed one morning scrolling through the latest listings together, the stars aligned.
He looked so stupid. We knew we had to have him. The next day we trekked over to Columbus Humane to visit him. He was skittish, which we were told was normal for any dog in an unfamiliar environment. We wouldn’t know his true personality until he had a few months to settle in, they said, but he seemed like a guy we could hang with. We changed his name, obviously; Zander simply sounded too distinguished. He needed a human name, and one that we could groan in an extremely silly voice. And thus, his reign as Carl began.
We loved him immediately. He has an absolutely ridiculous face. His neck has seemingly infinite folds. He sleeps with his head wedged under our recliner footrests as if begging us to accidentally kill him when we stand up. He blusters around when he hears commotion outside, not quite barking or growling, but just huffing and puffing like an old man wishing kids would get off his lawn. We gave him an old Pittsburgh Penguins blanket that I got for free at an event when I was in high school, and he immediately deemed it his most prized possession. He carries it around the apartment wherever he goes, and sucks on it as he falls asleep.
As my friend Jordan put it, “He looks like he’s either never had a single thought, or he knows how the world is going to end.” As my friend Julia put it, “You know how cats supposedly have nine lives, and you can tell the ones who have been around the block before? Carl is definitely brand new.”
In the past year, we’ve been through a lot together.
Just a couple months after bringing him home, he was attacked by another dog at the farmers market. A couple vet visits and a $700 credit card charge later, he was on the mend wearing a giant cone around his neck and a tube in his shoulder. I wrestled him to the ground more times than I can count that weekend to try and stop him from scratching his stitches as I changed his bandages, and though he was unhappy with me in the moment, we are now bonded through shared trauma.
On a happier note, he’s who welcomed us home after we got married. He’s met so many of our friends. He’s an incredible roadtrip partner, thrusting his head outside the window until he’s satisfied and then promptly passing out in the back seat of the car for hours on end. He keeps me company as I work every day, and his deceptively intimidating bark makes me feel a little safer when I’m home alone. He leaps about 12 feet into the air every time Tony comes home, wiggling his butt more than you’d believe. He’s always down for a long walk, and he’s learned to love running through the fields at my parents’ house with my childhood dog Grace, a grizzled outdoorswoman who surely bullies Carl for his city boy tendencies.
I’m too embarrassed to note all of the inside jokes Carl has prompted in our household. We have an absolutely deranged voice we use to imitate and create lore about him, implying that he is either a pathological liar or had the most spectacular adventures imaginable in the three years before he came to us. The dry erase board on our fridge is almost exclusively used to write slander about him. Instead of telling him “Happy Gotcha Day” on his one-year adoption anniversary, we congratulated him on the great work he’s done and gleefully told him that his contract has been extended. The crux of the relationship Tony and I share has always been doing bits only the two of us find funny, and Carl has really sent that spiraling into overdrive.
But he’s mostly showered in praise, deserved and otherwise, given big treats, and snuggled as much as he will physically allow. He is the perfect happy-go-lucky guy to have completed our little family for now — the hilariously stupid mug on Columbus Humane’s website didn’t lead us astray. After just one year, we love him so much. And though he would never tell us (he does not speak English), I bet he loves us too.