Christmas Surprise

This was written by my daughter, Teresa Bartock, a few years ago. She said that I could share it on my blog.

            Growing up, I was a cat lover and didn’t care for dogs at all.  My husband, on the other hand, was a dog lover.  Of course, when we lived in an apartment, I won the battle since we didn’t have a yard of our own.  When we bought our house, I finally gave in and let him get a dog.  His choice was a purebred Siberian Husky, which he named Snyder.  After we got Snyder, my attitude about dogs didn’t really go in the direction my husband had hoped for.  It seemed to me that Snyder would do anything and everything that he could in order to make me mad.  It wasn’t until I met Santana that my attitude began to change. 

In December 2009, I was laid off from my job.  At that time, we had 4 cats and a dog to feed.  With my husband also being laid off earlier in the year, I was unsure what we were going to do.  I did know for sure that I would do whatever I could to take care of our little family and there was no possible way I would ever get rid of my babies.  

  The day after my layoff, my husband and I were heading out to go to the store.  As we walked to the car, I noticed something strange in the backyard.  I started to walk towards it and noticed that it moved.  It was a cute, scared little puppy.  I have a 6 ft chain linked fence around my backyard with a lock on the gate, so the first thing I wondered was how this little dog managed to get in back there.  I knew there was no way this puppy could have climbed the fence and after walking around the yard I didn’t see where he could have dug underneath the fence either.  There was only one thing that we could conclude from this.  Someone had to have put him in our backyard during the night or real early that morning. 

We quickly went into the backyard to see how this puppy would react to us.  He was a little scared, but was a very sweet puppy.  My husband and I spent all morning talking about what we should do.  With unemployment rate at a high, we assumed that whoever put him in our backyard was probably in the same dilemma that we were in.  They probably couldn’t afford to take care of him, but didn’t have the heart to take him to the pound.  We assumed that they saw Snyder running around our backyard on several occasions and thought that we would give this puppy a good home as well. 

We took a leap of faith on the fact that we would soon be employed again.  We decided to keep the puppy, which I decided to name Santana.  After a few short weeks, I noticed a significant change in Snyder’s behavior.  It was as if, all this time, Snyder just needed a little brother to play with.  Snyder is still hyper, but no longer destructive.  And Santana is the lazy puppy.  The two of them are complete opposites, and are totally inseparable.   

Without that leap of faith, I would have never experienced why dogs are called “man’s best friend.”  His previous owner will never know how Santana has changed our family for the better.  This former dog-hater now gladly calls herself a dog lover.  That Christmas we may not have been able to give presents, but we sure received a great one.