A PUPPY IN MY CHRISTMAS STOCKING AND A CHANCE FOR YOU TO WIN BOOKS

Luna Belle on her way home.

Santa came early and brought us a corgi puppy. Meet Luna Belle, our sweet, red and white Pembroke Welsh Corgi.

She’s such a blessing because we’ve wanted another corgi since we lost our girl, Samantha in October

2017.  Since late 2017 and 2018 was a time of great change – adapting to a new home in a new state (we moved from Florida to Tennessee) and getting in sync with my husband’s retirement – plus, we did a fair amount of traveling this year. With all that on our plate, we decided to wait until life settled down.

Then, it was a matter of locating a puppy and waiting for the pup to be old enough to be away from its mother. Everything finally came together last week.

In so many ways, having a puppy in the house is like having a newborn. It’s like childbirth, too. The joy of having this little being in our lives makes us forget the pains of puppyhood – the frequent trips outside on the journey to housetraining. The experts say a puppy can hold it one hour for each month she is old. Luna is two months old. You can do the math…that means we’re taking trips outside every two hours. I have to give her credit, after her “last call” at night, the little thing is making it through the night for about six hours. That’s such a blessing.

Our Samantha lived to be almost twelve years old. We got her when she was three months old. For the life of me, I can’t remember the

Samantha in her Christmas sweater

housetraining process. All I remember is that she was easy.  Granted, Sammy was a month older than Luna when we got her, but I swear, I don’t remember her having accidents in the house. Selective memory?

Not gonna lie, our first week with Luna has brought some challenges. I’ve had to rethink my writing routine. Where I used to have long stretches of uninterrupted time to do my pages, now, I have to work in sprints between puppy “outings.”

Also, northeast Tennessee experienced a winter storm the likes of which the area hadn’t seen in ages. Our neighbor, who was born and raised here, says he hasn’t seen this much snow since he was a boy. We got nine inches, which made that first week of house training…interesting.

But Luna is so worth it. She loves the snow. She’s already developed a personality that is a wonderful mix of sweet and cuddly and adventurous and playful.

Luna

Something my friends have asked is why we didn’t adopt a rescue. That’s a great question. We tried several times to adopt rescue corgis, but they were placed just as soon as we submitted our application (we were always behind a long line of applicants). It’s wonderful that so many people are open to bringing rescues into their families. Since that wasn’t our path this time, we will continue to donate to the ASPCA and support our local shelter.

Thank you, Santa, for bringing our little Luna to us. Dear readers, what is on your Christmas/holiday list? I’ll give a bundle of Christmas books to one reader who comments below.

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National bestselling author Nancy Robards Thompson lives and writes in Tennessee, but her imagination transports her all over the world. She has found Nirvana doing what she loves most – writing romance and women's fiction full-time. She's sold more than 40 books, which critics have deemed, “…funny, smart and observant.”

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