For nine years, I thought I knew my husband. James was predictable in the best way—steady, reliable, the kind of man who showed up for soccer games and remembered to buy milk without being asked. Our marriage wasn’t perfect, but it was ours.
Two kids, a modest house in the suburbs, and a life that felt comfortably ordinary.
Until the night walks started. It began innocently enough with a dog.
James had been campaigning for months to adopt one, wearing me down with the persistence of a seasoned negotiator. “I’ll handle everything,” he’d promise, his eyes bright with enthusiasm.
“Feeding, training, walks—all of it.
You won’t have to lift a finger.”
I’d heard variations of this promise before. About the kids’ goldfish that I ended up flushing. About the hamster whose cage I cleaned every week despite James’s solemn vows.
About literally everything that required ongoing responsibility in our household.
“We already have two kids under eight,” I reminded him, gesturing to the living room where our seven-year-old daughter, Emma, was attempting to teach our five-year-old son, Max, a complicated TikTok dance. “I’m running a daycare, a restaurant, and a laundry service simultaneously.
Adding a dog feels like volunteering for chaos.”
But James was relentless, and he had recruited powerful allies. The kids caught wind of the potential dog and launched a full-scale campaign.
Puppy drawings appeared on the refrigerator overnight.
Emma wrote a persuasive essay for school titled “Why My Mom Should Let Us Get a Dog,” complete with cited sources and a bibliography. Max started a daily countdown on the kitchen calendar, even though no one had agreed to anything. I held out for three weeks before I caved.
The day we went to the animal shelter, the kids were vibrating with excitement.
They raced from kennel to kennel, faces pressed against chain-link fencing, debating the merits of every wagging tail. James walked slowly, methodically, as if this were the most important decision of his life.
We found Daisy in the back corner—a medium-sized mutt with floppy ears, a coat that couldn’t decide if it was brown or gray, and eyes so expressive they seemed almost human. When James knelt down, she immediately pressed her nose through the fence and licked his hand.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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