I Had to Shake my Head and Laugh

I don’t know about you but every once in a while something will happen that makes me shake my head and laugh. Within the past 3 months, my life has been turned upside down by my German Shepherd puppy Jackson and I am finding humor in the fact that I am making play dates for him. My only human child is off at college and now I have an only fuzzy child who has a lot of energy and desperately needs other friends to play with. Jackson is 5 months old now and about 42 pounds and I’ve been told he’s going to be full of energy until he is 1 ½ years old. Wish me luck! Anyway, last night I received a text message from my friend who has an only fuzzy child named Addy and asked if Jackson wanted to play today. It makes me shake my head because Jackson is always full of energy and I have close to none. Even though he gets to play with another dog at the play date, I still have to get him there and walk with him on his leash. It can be challenging.

When I arrived at the play date today, my friend showed up with her husband and they walked the dogs into the park together so I didn’t get dragged into it by Jackson. I had already taken him to my best friend’s house early in the morning to play with her family so I was running low on energy but I knew I had just enough to walk myself into the park and watch the dogs play. While the dogs were running around and wrestling with each other, I had my friend take some pictures and videos of them. They were having so much fun and I wanted to capture the moment. Unfortunately for me, Jackson and Addy decided to come running back to us at full speed. I couldn’t get my legs to move fast enough to get out of the way so I bent down and braced for impact. Sure enough, they ran into me and I went down. It must have looked pretty funny too because I didn’t just fall on my butt. I fell all the way down to the ground so my back and head were in the fallen leaves and my feet were up in the air. The dogs must have thought I wanted to play with them too because they were both in my face licking me. As I was laying there on the ground, I was shaking my head and laughing because I never would have imagined having a new puppy in my life once my daughter went off to college. My husband and I were so close to being “empty nesters” and now we have this bundle of energy and joy that keeps every minute of our lives interesting. Hopefully, he will be a great service dog some day and he can pick me up instead of knocking me down.