If Erica goes to adopt one puppy, she’ll end up with three.
In March of 2025, I went to adopt a puppy.
On the way there, I came up with what seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan: we should get two puppies.
Hear me out…
At the time, Teddy and Sox were both 12, and Josey was eight. Obviously, a puppy would need someone young to play with, and it didn’t seem fair to expect the senior citizens to entertain a baby. So really, getting two puppies was the responsible thing to do.
This logic made perfect sense right up until Phil and I got there and couldn’t agree on which two puppies to bring home.
I mean, look at those faces. It was like Sophie’s Choice, only with Shih Tzus. So we got three. This is how good decisions are made, people 
.
Luckily, I work remotely from home, although over the next several months I questioned both the word luckily and my own sanity several times a day.
Fortunately though, I had help…
Teddy appointed himself Head of Surveillance and Compliance. He had no interest in actually raising three puppies, but he was deeply invested in making sure everyone followed the rules. If one of the babies wandered somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, got into something he shouldn’t, or became suspiciously quiet, Teddy would come find me and stare at me nervously until I followed him to investigate.
“Excuse me. Management? We have a situation.”
He was basically a furry little hall monitor. Teddy didn’t want to get involved, but he wanted the appropriate authorities notified when he witnessed them doing no-no stuff.
Josey, on the other hand, was Miss Peggy from Romper Room. She ran the daycare.
Three puppies climbing on her? Fine. Somebody chewing on her? Fine. One sleeping on top of her while another used her as playground equipment? Also fine.
I’d look over and find Josey in the middle of a puppy pile, patiently allowing whatever fresh nonsense was happening that day. She didn’t report anybody or enforce rules. She just kept everybody alive until their mother got off work. She was Aunty Jojo
And somewhere in all that chaos, Milo, Buster and Mikey became the Lollipop Guild 2.0. (Lollipop Guild 1.0 was Teddy, Sox and Jax. Their stories are for another day 
)
Looking back, I’m still not entirely sure how going to get one puppy turned into coming home with three, but we figured it out. We made room, turned the house into a gated maze, and bought a lot more dog food, toys, and treats. We also accepted that personal space was no longer included with membership in this family.
Phil (the hubs), meanwhile, learned a valuable lesson about marriage: sometime before saying “I do,” he probably should have asked how many dogs I planned to have…he had only thought about human children, not the furry kind.
Thirty-five years later, I think we can safely say the answer was a lot. But he wouldn’t have traded a single one of them, past or present. And neither would I.
There are worse ways to end the day than underneath a pile of love. 
P.S. Dad doesn’t know this, but Mom obsessively watches fb for senior dogs who need homes and has been thinking about fostering. We think it’s a great idea.
After all, we had some pretty good teachers. —The Lollipop Guild 2.0
Anyway—Off We Go
© 2026 Erica Shoemaker. All rights reserved.
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