10 years ago I wrote a pretty funny blog about Husband’s tour in Afghanistan while I was stuck at home in the US with three children and The Dog, whom I didn’t really like. A lot has changed. For one, Husband is in China, not Afghanistan. I am at home. I still have three children, but Child 1 is married and lives in another state with her husband and The Dog, who miraculously is still with us despite being close to 15 years old, which I understand is pretty ancient in Dog Years.

For two, I also lived in China for 14 dog years, but got a divorce and left. Not a divorce from Husband to whom I’ve been married for a looong time and intend to keep around–a divorce from China. I broke up with China and left. It’s not me, China, it’s you. I need to see other countries and I was tired of not being able to go anywhere because of the NO COVID policy, so I left. And then of course China got rid of their NO COVID policy, but will I go back? Like I said, I need to see other countries.

For three, I have two more dogs now. More on them later.

Husband is bored and lonely in China and asked me to start another blog, so here it is, Husband. Just for you. In this blog, y’all will learn a lot about me including that I love my job but won’t talk about it, that Child 2 graduated from university, and Child 3 is a flute performance major and is the principle flautist in her university’s wind symphony. I take credit for this achievement because I paid for her flute.

So when Husband and I moved to China in the middle of a pandemic, we were lonely. OK, well I was lonely. I missed the children, all of whom were either working or in school and couldn’t come to China. So Husband, who seems to believe adding animals in the mix will solve lots of problems, convinced me to get a dog in China. So we found a cute, tiny little abandoned something or other and adopted her. And by “adopted” I mean let her take over our bed and pee on our rugs. She is adorable–all black with a little white lopsided beard. She loves to cock her head an look at us. We sometimes aren’t sure that she isn’t a cat in a dog costume. She is very prissy and aloof and does NOT like snuggles. For the purposes of this blog, I will call her “Dot” because she is no bigger than one. So Dot worked as a distraction for about 10 minutes until I realized I was spending yet another Christmas without the children and I was unable to leave China and they could not come visit me. So this is the point where I filed for divorce from a country because of irreconcilable differences and I will not be paying any alimony. But China got custody of Dot and Husband in the split and they now live together in a house there for another year or so or until Husband misses me so much he can’t stand it and he too will leave China. Thus the purpose of this blog! This is a photo of Dot on our bed in China eyeing us suspiciously.

I came back to America and reunited with Child 2 and Child 3 and then the weirdest thing began to happen–I began to miss The Dog and Dot. I mean honestly, it must have been a hormone deficiency because if you got back and read 365 Bad Days which was my first-ish blog, you will notice that I did not like The Dog and that she looooooooooooooooved me so much that I was constantly tripping over her. The Dog is living her best life living with Child 1 who now knows what it is like to not be able to go to the bathroom without someone sniffing under the door to see if she can smell you. She is Child 1’s little old baby and is getting all the pampering she ever desired. This is a photo of The Dog. She is the one resting on the moose in case you were confused by the extra animal.

And this leads us to my next mistake whom we will call Satan because she is an evil devil dog. Here is a photo of Satan.

I know you are wondering how such a sweet tiny little 7lb ball of fluff and ears can be the devil, but oh, she is deceiving you. She is just lulling you into a false sense of sedation with her big black eyes before she eats you. OK, well she doesn’t actually eat people, but she does bite! OK, well she only sometimes breaks the skin but we all have bruises and scars from her chomping down hard on our hands when we try to pet her! See, what happened is she is crazy but we didn’t know that when we adopted her because she was jet-lagged from her long trip across the Pacific. Satan is a rescue dog from Korea so we assumed she would be difficult–I mean The Dog was a Korean street dog and heaven knows she wasn’t easy! But whereas The Dog on a scale of evil super-villains is more of a Dr. Doofenschmertz, Satan is, well, a Beelzebub who screams when she poops. I did not know that dogs could scream, but this one does. She doesn’t bark–she shrieks like a banshee. Scared me half to death the first time she did it because it kind of sounds like the movie Psycho when someone is getting murdered. But because of the jet-lag, her foster family did not know this, or they knew and did not tell us which is probably what happened. Because who wants to adopt a screaming Banshee who bites?

But the problem with Satan is that sometimes, for just long enough to get your hopes up, she is the sweetest, cuddliest ball of snuggle fluff and she just wants to sit in your lap and look adoringly at you while you pet her. And that is what she did when we went to the fosters to meet her. So we were deceived! And we adopted her and now we live with a beautiful fluffy tiny dog who rules the house and screams when she poops. Every. Time. And also bites. We are working with a trainer who has trained the dogs of some very rich and famous people, and even she was like “your dog is weird.” So stay tuned to see our progress in training little Satan to be a normal dog and less of a rabid fox-banshee type of demon. We are going to be trying some Prozac this week, so we will see if Satan can be charmed with mood-altering drugs. Here’s hoping for success! Or at least less biting. We are determined not to let Satan win but it will be a battle.