Nontrivial Exercises

2 Parents, 3 Kids, 4 Pets

We are moving ever-closer to being fully integrated in American Suburbia, having now acquired our first dog. We actually were putting this off as long as we could – not because we do not like dogs, but rather because we do, but we had the following concerns:

• We do not want our house to smell like a dog
• We do not want dog hair all around our house
• We like big dogs (like labs), and have what is a relatively big back yard (for American Suburbia), but it is still not big enough for a decent sized dog to truly run around in and get enough exercise
• We do not want a little yippie, high-strung dog

For these reasons, we didn’t really want an inside dog (smell and hair) and we didn’t have enough real room for a decent sized dog. However, we also have 2 boys, one of whom is 4, and it’s therefore very hard not to have a dog.

We kept the Yorkie of a friend of ours at our house for a few days and kind of fell in love with her. She was small, but not high-strung. She didn’t smell bad, and Yorkies don’t shed – their hair continually grows. She was cute and cuddly even as a three-year-old, and we really liked her.

So, after looking around a while, on Saturday we found Diego, a four-month-old Yorkie puppy pictured above that we are now proud to call our own. This brings our family Suburbia metrics to the following:

• 3 kids
• 4 pets – 1 tortoise, 2 fish, 1 dog
• 1 minivan
• 1 child playing soccer
• 4 collapsible canvas chairs
• 3 scooters