How "We Should" Turned into Winnie and Blue: A Cautionary Tale About Big Ideas and Tiny Paws

Photo credit to Hannah Swanson

I used to be the kind of person who jumped into big ideas without hesitation. Somewhere along the way, I became the person who said, “That sounds like a lot of work.” This is the story of how two puppies called me out on that.

Truth be told, the story behind how we ended up with Winnie and Blue is kind of funny. I don’t even think Craig knows this little tidbit of information.

One day, Craig and I were talking, and he was throwing out another idea of what we “should do.”

Ever since I’ve known Craig, he’s been adventurous. He has big ideas. He sees an opportunity and goes for it—and more often than not, I follow along. We call it “kicking the box.”

If either one of us has a dream and says something like, “You know what we should do?” it’s the other person’s responsibility to reply, “What should we do?” From there, we “kick the box” together—dreaming up the biggest, best version of that idea.

“We should build a treehouse.”

Which we did—only in dreaming it up, it went big and turned into a tiny home in our backyard.

On one of our trips to Boone, NC, Craig said, “We should find an old cabin on a creek and renovate it.”

Which we did.

On that same trip, we found a quaint consignment store with a coffee bar, and Craig said, “Knoxville needs something like this. We should do this in Knoxville.”

Done. Backroads Market & Designs was born.

“We should move.”

Done. Twice.

“We should renovate another cabin.”

Done. This time in Franklin, NC.

“We should move outside the city with more land and a barn.”

Done.

“We should live in a camper while we renovate our new house.”

Done. I don’t recommend it.

And on and on.

Until one day, I started responding to Craig’s “we should” with, “Ew… that sounds like a lot of work.”

More recently, he replied, “What happened to you? You used to be adventurous.”

It made me stop and think. What did happen?

Am I lazy now?

Have I stopped being adventurous?

Have I settled into complacency?

Or am I just menopausal?

I decided the next idea Craig had, I was going to kick the box with him—no matter what.

Guess what the next idea was?

Yep. You guessed it.

“We should get one of these!” he said, holding up his phone to show me a picture of the most adorable puppies, ready to be adopted.

So, we did. We went to “look” at the puppies.

Craig told me I could pick one out—like it was candy or jewelry. Little did I know, I was actually picking out a lot of work.

I had my eye on Blue (named for the color of his collar). Craig had his eye on Teal.

Blue was calm and sweet, curled up in my lap. Craig asked me a few times if I was sure. I was. So we headed home with Blue.

He slept the entire car ride—so calm, so chill.

Until he wasn’t.

Now he has a lot more personality and definitely more energy. I tell Craig all the time that Blue tricked me. I thought I was getting the calm one.

A week later, the breeder contacted us and asked if we would “foster” Teal until she was adopted.

Craig said, “We should foster her.”

We couldn’t get her for another week because we already had a vacation planned. I agreed—confident she would be adopted by the time we got back. I was actually praying she would be.

But… no.

When we returned, we brought Teal into our home and renamed her Winnie (Winnie Teal). We fostered her for exactly two days before realizing she was meant to be ours.

I have more to say about the whole raising puppies thing—but I’ll save that for my next post.

Let’s just say, I learned a lot about puppies… and a lot about myself.