Day One: A Puppy’s Unexpected Lesson in Outweighing Anxiety

It’s day one. Life has been hectic—work projects, personal projects, travel schedules where you almost lose track of where your family members maybe in at a given week. Everybody in the house is busy, busy, busy! Calendars have to be jigged and rejigged to fit everything in.  Somehow, in the middle of all that, I agreed to bring a dog into the mix. And yes… anxiety was already creeping in.

Is the cuteness really worth it? Can I handle this on top of everything else? Will the house survive? Will I survive? Somehow, the day passed in the blink of an eye. And yet, here we are. And surprisingly, it’s been… positive.

For those of us who haven’t spent much time with dogs, the reality can hit hard. Puppies demand attention, patience, and a recalibration of daily life. And for anyone who lives life at full speed, “done, done, done,” adopting a puppy introduces a whole new dimension of thought.