I don’t think I’ve told you the story yet about Miss Eloise, aka Weezer. She was the most unexpected treasure to enter our lives.

Eight years ago, Eddie and I traveled to Pennsylvania to visit with his family. His grandmother’s house, Blackburn Farm, was in the process of being sold, and we were summoned by Eddie’s father, Henry Lafayette Collins III, to spend the weekend soaking up the last few memories of the house. Because no weekend with Henry Lafayette Collins III, aka Hank, comes without an itinerary, we knew it was going to be a weekend filled with sorting through items in the house and attending the Devon Horse Show. Eddie’s family was heavily into the horse scene,  so attending the horse show was a completely normal thing for us to have on our agenda.

We got dressed up and arrived at the horse show around 10am. I was out of my element and edging close to breaking out in hives. The plethora of women’s hats, the pink & green dresses, the horse-drawn buggies, the picture-perfect picnics – none of this was in my DNA. And then, I noticed someone casually holding a cocktail.

‘This, I can do,’ I thought to myself.

I made it a mission to drag Eddie with me to hunt & gather some liquid courage. By 10:30 am, we found it in the form of bottled mojitos, and then the fun began.

I will be the first person to admit this – I am a lousy drinker. A total lightweight. I tend to get nervous in large social situations, and often opt out of eating in public for fear of spilling something or getting food stuck in my teeth. Between the heat of the sun, the lack of sustenance and the early start to our drinking, it didn’t take long before those mojitos kicked in.

As we stumbled strolled through the horse show, we noticed a stall with a scribbled sign that said ‘Ponies & Puppies for Sale’. Eddie joked that we should buy a pony for Emmy, and I responded by saying in dead seriousness, ‘let’s buy a puppy.’ We already had a dog at home, a rescue yellow lab named Sam the Dog. We had never discussed getting a puppy, nor had we considered what it would be like to own two dogs.

Four words. That’s all it took.

We stepped into the stall of Corgi puppies as dog owners of one, and left the stall, proud, buzzed & happy, now dog owners of two.

By late afternoon, we had sobered up enough to realize that we just bought a mojito puppy. We had nothing…no food, collar, leash, bowl. We found a pet store, bought stuff, and headed back to Blackburn Farm. We tossed around some different names and quickly landed on Eloise.

By Sunday night, we were back in Boxborough. Sam the Dog was completely rattled and refused to interact with the feisty girl. The kids came home and I told them to go find Eddie. They found him in my office, holding a bundle of fur. The rest is history.

Here’s what I learned:

• Corgi puppies are the best. They are amazing dogs & everyone should have at least one.
• Be careful when drinking mojitos on an empty stomach, in the sun & in the vicinity of puppies for sale.
• Corgis as a breed should have a motto: ‘who are YOU calling small dog?’
• I am lucky to have Henry Lafayette Collins IV (aka, Eddie) as my partner in crime. There are not too many people who would go along with a mojito puppy purchase, and I love that I managed to find someone that is as ready to blindly dive into something unplanned as much as I am.
• Dogs really do make everything better.