It didn't take me long after arriving at my parents' house to hear the whining coming from behind my sisters' door. It did take me a while to sneak away and take a peek at her. She was a writhing, black and white mass of puppy love! Until...her teeth sunk into my finger. Of course, I thought she was so cute that I didn't even care. Oh cute! She's teething! Awwww!
So I closed the door and pretended that I had not met her. We enjoyed our Christmas Eve dinner with the background noise of puppy cries, all the while pretending not to notice. I went to bed that Christmas Eve just knowing that I would get the most perfect puppy in the morning. I had no idea what awaited me.
That Christmas was quite the whirlwind. My sister put her in bed with me that morning and I acted surprised. We all had a good laugh at the whining from the night before. I knew that they knew that I heard, but we kept up the game anyway. They had decided to name her Noel, being that she was a Christmas gift and all, but it took T-minus 10 seconds to learn that a name as peaceful as Noel would not fit the wild thing that was loose in the house. She was all over the place and took a bite out of anything that tried to tame her. I wanted to hold her and cuddle her and make her all mine...she wanted to rule the world in an evil demon sort of way.
My family travels on holidays so we had no choice but to take the new demon dog with us. At that point, Noel was still the name of choice, but I was definitely wracking my brain looking for a more fitting alternative. As we visited grandparents, she left a wide path of destruction. As she chewed into my grandfather's outside stereo wires, I decided that Sugar was probably too sweet of a name, too. She was definitely the sweetest thing I'd seen, but acted like the most feral dog on the face of the planet. The only time she settled down was when I would hold her, but how can you have Christmas dinner with your grandparents that don't want dogs in their home when you have to continuously hold your wild thing of a dog? You can't. Thus the destruction that would cement her reputation.
As I returned back to my apartment that evening, the still unnamed wild thing continued to show how wild she really was. Down with the garland! Down with the ribbons! She ran laps around my little apartment, growling and barking and carrying on like nobody's business.
At this point all I wanted to know was, will the pound take her back?
