Normally, my parents have two dogs. Every Christmas though, we watch our neighbor's dog while they spend the holiday with family in Ohio, bringing our total to 3 dogs.
This year though, we had 6.
You see Kara adopted a dog, Lucy. Lucy normally lives with Kara in New York. But after months of secret planning, Dad, Kara, and I managed to pull off an amazing surprise for Mom. Kara was originally supposed to remain in New York for the holidays but begged her boss to give her the day after Christmas off. So she decided to surprise Mom by loading Lucy in a rental car and driving home just in time for Christmas Eve mass.
Now we were up to 4 dogs.
Even before Kara planned her surprise trip, I agreed to watch our neighbor's 2 dogs. I was living at home still, utterly convinced that I wasn't going to be leaving anytime soon. When I ran into a neighbor while running and she asked me to dog & house sit it was a no-brainer. A few days out of the house sounded perfect so I readily agreed.
But then out of left field I got an offer, packed up my life, and moved to Maryland.
And completely forgot about those other 2 dogs.
By the time our neighbor texted to ask if we were still on, I felt guilty backing out last minute. I was going to be in town and I didn't have any plans for that time. Plus the dogs are just too cute.
Our original plan was to have a 6-dog Christmas but we quickly found out that not everybody quite got along. So we dropped back down to 4 and I spent my time shuffling back and forth between houses.
Opening Christmas presents was spent moving dogs out of the way. Sure they had their own presents but in true dog fashion, what we had was way more interesting.
Though it was chaotic and exhausting at times, it was worth every second. There's just something so magical about dogs.
A dog day Christmas was great!
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