I want to begin by apologizing for my negligence in taking so long to update this blog. Granted, we have lived, and are still living, the most horrendous and destructive pandemic since the Spanish Flu of 1918, but still…I should’ve written.

I was fired from my last staff writer job on March 15, 2020.  

There was a supreme miscommunication between me and a substitute editor who was covering for only a short time, I found out later. The virus was affecting NYC worse than in any other place in the United States at that time. It turned out that New York City was the epicenter of the entire global pandemic, and I was sensitive about anyone wishing to compare their pandemic experience to mine. The editor tried to say she “had [the pandemic] bad by her too,” but I knew that couldn’t have been true. She wasn’t in NYC. She didn’t know. She couldn’t have known the fear, the deaths, the constant siren sounds, the feelings of abandonment that I, and everyone in NYC, were experiencing.

My God, it was awful.

            But then on a weekday in July, as I sat at an outdoor café, I spied a very small stuffed animal under a fellow coffee drinker’s chair. I soon found out it wasn’t a stuffed animal.

It was a puppy.
            That’s where the story started…

Once I got home, I feverishly looked online for a puppy like the one I’d just seen. A nearby restaurant owner who I’m friends with gave me the confidence to follow through with the purchase. He told me that his family would take the puppy if he didn’t work out with me.

That was all the reassurance I needed.

I ended up getting the puppy I’d just seen online… and that’s where my life began again.

Today, that puppy is my everything.

            A mini Aussiedoodle, his name is Oliver. I just had him weighed on the morning of Friday, July 23rd, 2021. Being a year and two months old, he weighed in at slightly over 38.3 lbs. When I first got him in July 2020, at eight weeks old, he weighed 7.5 lbs. From things I read online, mini Aussidoodles don’t usually exceed 15 lbs. in weight. I assumed he’d get a little larger than his two-month-old size, but never would I have expected he’d get to what he is now.

However, I’m currently realizing I wouldn’t have him any other way. I love his big size. He’s a real dog who can compete with other real dogs. Never do I have to worry about him being abused by other larger dogs because he’s too small or fragile. No, today he stands his ground and is fully equipped to withstand the harshness of bigger dogs but is still gentle with dogs smaller than he is.  If anything, he imposes plenty of severity himself—and his aggressive treatment of other dogs is something I’m equally worried about.  

His personality has really started to take shape now, too, and he is the cheekiest little rascal in the neighborhood. As he is a Poodle and an Australian Shepherd mix, two intelligent breeds, he was always destined to be smart. Sometimes outsmarting me, Oliver does everything in his power to get what he wants. And what he wants are treats.

Whenever we’re on the sidewalk outside and approaching a dog he’s friends with, either Oliver lies flat on his back, or flat on his stomach, so he can then squirm around and be submissive to his canine pal. Fellow dog owners can’t help but laugh whenever he behaves this way.

Oliver runs freely in dog-run at least once every day, in addition to our walks around the neighborhood to relieve him. Oliver just returned home from summer sleep-away camp at a farm in New Jersey where he was able to swim in a pool and run around on real grass every day of a work week. While he was gone, boy did I miss him desperately?!

He's living his best life.

            That brings me to my life today. I’m a changed woman. Formerly living only for myself and for my own endeavors, I now care about my four- legged son’s life.  I’m an aspiring stand-up comedian, and today instead of carrying in my pockets set lists and notes for comedy, I carry around poop bags and treats for Oliver.

I stay prepared for my pup.

                        Life is better this way.