How soon is too soon?

I realize that is was a mere three posts ago that I wrote about sending our dog to live on J.R.'s uncle's llama ranch. (I also find humor in the fact that we actually did send our old dog to live on a farm and aren't just using that as a euphemism to protect our children from life's hard truths.)

And I honestly couldn't tell you what possessed me. Maybe it was that for most of my life, there has been a dog at my feet. Maybe it was looking at the faces of my boys and knowing that if we wait for another bird dog puppy, it will be a good three years before they have a pet again (because Lord help me, I am not having two toddlers AND a puppy).

Regardless of what it was, I somehow ended up on Petfinder. It is impossible to go onto Petfinder and not fall in love. I should have known better. I should have told myself not to be foolish. I should have closed my laptop and done anything else but look at dogs.

But I couldn't. The faces. The eyes. The poor little hearts just begging to be loved.

And then, this face.

The face that did me in. Chester's face.

J.R. did not fall in love as quickly. He told me he needed a break from picking up dog mess and wiping dirt off of paws. He reminded me about the dog hair I will no longer have on my baseboards.

But the one that got me was when he argued that it looked like we had pawned off our dog just so we could get another one.

And then I remembered that for as much as I loved Cody, he was never really "my" dog. J.R. had him for nearly five years before I came in the picture. And I was the woman who moved in on Cody's pal and produced all these little people who yanked his ears, woke him from his naps, and littered his floor with toys.

Oh sure, we had our moments. You haven't lived until you've had an 80-pound dog try to turn a simple ear scratch into an opportunity to climb into your lap.

We tried to adopt a lab puppy several years ago. A dog that would be "mine." Unknowingly ended up with Cujo. Our sweet little lab ate all the ducting and wires connecting our air-conditioner to the house, devoured four firethorn bushes, and then started to eat the door jamb leading from the dog run to the garage. Nevermind what she did to my favorite pair of boots. She was more than a chewer. She was an eating machine with severe separation anxiety.

My broken heart decided I just wasn't going to have a dog. And ultimately, Cody was always the reason that I didn't have the dog I wanted. Not that I loved Cody any less for it, but I knew I wasn't Cody's person and never would be.

So something possessed me the other day, and I found Chester. After three days of whimpering and pouting (and a lot of manipulation), J.R. reluctantly admitted last night that he missed having a dog. That maybe this little love could be part of our family.

And if not Chester, maybe Dawkins.

So I filled out the application. I explained our decision to give up Cody. I explained why we miss having a dog. I hit send.

And then I started worrying. Maybe Aaron won't really do his fair share of the work, and I'll spend the next 10 years listening to J.R. talk about how he didn't want this dog in the first place. Maybe J.R.'s parents will misunderstand our decision and think we'll never have another bird dog for them. Maybe this adoption will end up being as disastrous as our last.

But mostly, I'm worried that maybe it is too soon. Maybe this is my rebound dog. Maybe I just can't resist a pathetic face (maybe that explains a lot of my ex-boyfriends).

I just don't know how soon is too soon.