The story I'll probably never live down.

Sometimes I have impulse control problems, a fact that is usually balanced by the fact that I’m quite an amenable girl, ready to listen and have my impulses checked. That is, until I’m the only adult at home. (Cue the ominous music.)

Most of the time it goes like this: I have a wild idea, I run it by Chinua, he gives feedback to the effect of, “Have you thought this through?” or even, “Have you gone crazy?” and I’ll take a little time to argue the merits of my plan before I make a decision.

If Chinua is not here, I’m forced to have the conversation with him in my head. It doesn’t always go as it would in real life. So, a week ago I was sitting at the table, doing some work and checking email, and I came across a post for a free dog in Chiang Mai. This caught my attention because I’ve been thinking about getting a dog for a long time—we’ve wanted a pet, and now we’re stable here and it seems like a good time. Our chickens all flew away and our little bunny died (so sad). What’s more, this was a hypoallergenic dog—a six-month old Shih Tzu. If I didn’t have such bad allergies to dogs, we could have adopted a dog any time we wanted—there are street puppies around, we even had one of our own for a while, before we found a home for him with some lovely people in the market.

So, reading the post about the free dog, my treasure hunt spidey sense was pinging. I was thinking, should we? Should we?

Chinua had some reservations about getting a dog—mainly around the question of travel. We still travel and we would need to find someone to look after our dog when we went away. I wrote to him, asking what he thought about this dog. However, because he was on a plane at the moment, there was no way he could get my email. I started doing some research and found that there is a woman in town who takes care of dogs for payment, kind of like a very small kennel. I went off to talk to her and found that her costs were reasonable. I asked the man who was giving the dog if he would hold her for me while we made our way to Chiang Mai.

I had now emailed my husband and done all the research I needed to do. I had a good conversation with Chinua in my head where I listed the facts. He agreed with me (in my head). It was time for action. We were now two hours into the school morning. I wrote another email to Chinua. This one said, “I’m doing it! I accept full responsibility!”

“I have kind of a crazy idea,” I told the kids.

Kenya perked up. “What? What? I love crazy ideas!”

This was only fuel for my fire. Heaven help Kenya and I when she gets older and we are traveling the world together, taking Paris, Istanbul, and Hanoi by storm.

I bought bus tickets, and by five o’clock, we were all on vans to get to Chiang Mai. The only thing was that the bus company didn’t have tickets for all five of us on one bus, so Kai and Kenya rode on a separate van for the first time. It was uneventful, except for the fact that the lady sitting next to Kenya had a tiny second thumb sticking out of her first thumb, and Kenya found this very interesting. They did well, and when their van stopped in Chiang Mai, I was at the door to greet them. (This is where the danger part comes in. Or the perceived danger. I knew well and good that they were fine on that bus of middle aged Thai aunties and uncles. I was a nervous wreck, however. I told them they did an excellent job, but for the sake of my heart we’re not going on separate buses again until they are thirty years old.)

By this time, my adrenaline was off the charts. We had to meet the dog’s owner at the bus station, which happened without a snag, and then we needed to check into our dog-friendly guesthouse. It was very late, and we gathered some food and our new dog, who was friendly and delightful, and headed for bed. I was zinging with anxiety and energy, and it was at this point that the conversations I was having with Chinua in my head took a drastic turn. He had been fine about getting a dog before, but now? Now he was furious. He had to live with this dog, of course. Clearly, he was going to hate me forever. Up till this point the dog had been an idea. But with her very real self sniffing around the guesthouse room, it became apparent that she was more than an idea. She was a dog. A dog who was now going to live with us.

I entered a different reality, one of panic and self-castigation and illegible Facebook messages to my husband whose plane still hadn’t landed. How terrible that we had only twelve good years before I ruined it all with a small fluffy dog.

The next day was full of more decisions about whether to drive immediately back to Pai or whether to stay for another night. But our dog-friendly guesthouse was full and there wasn’t anywhere for us to stay. The only reason I was interested was because of Loy Kratong, the amazing lantern festival where lanterns fill the sky like jellyfish, something we’ve seen only on a much smaller scale. I wasn’t getting anything right, we were leaving on the cusp of this amazing festival. But with five children and a dog, I didn’t feel up to the search for a guesthouse, and I wasn’t sure we should spend the money.

We headed back to Pai after I found a van service that would take us with a dog. “Sure!” they said. “180 baht. We’ll meet you in front of the McDonald’s.” We sat for a long time in a row in front of the McDonald’s, to the delight of passing tourists, until a song taew picked us up. A song taew is a truck with benches installed in the back.

“Is this what we’re driving to Pai?” Leafy asked.

“No, this will drive us to the bus,” I said. The driver proceeded to pick up several more people and then deliver us to the very same bus service that we always take, the one that charges 150 baht, the one that said dogs were not allowed. I gather I have to speak to the driver rather than the ticket sellers.

All the way home I fretted on the inside, while being outwardly cheerful about our sweet new pup, who sat nicely on Kenya’s lap and didn’t make a peep. I made lunch and called Leaf, who asked how I was doing. “Not so good,” I said in a voice that sounded like a pepto bismol frog. I told her all about how badly I had ruined everything. How Chinua was sure to disown me and be incredibly angry with me. I poured out my heart. And then I realized we had been disconnected. The phone rang. “Rae? Rae?” Leaf said, frantically. “Tell me, what did you say about a dog?”

I told her the whole story again.

And she made a good point. She said that the angry Chinua didn’t sound very much like the real Chinua.
(True, I thought.)
And that he adores me and loves me.
(Also true.)
So that while he might (understandably) be annoyed, he wasn’t going to hate me. Or disown me.

Later that night I spoke with Chinua and found that what Leaf suspected was true. He loves me. He’s a bit surprised that I got a dog, and he’s been teasing me non-stop about getting a dog when he'd been gone only one day. (He was thinking about getting a hamster, and I told him he should just think of her as a really big hamster.) But he loves me. Even though I have impulse control problems. And as soon as I talked to him, I calmed right down. I really, really love him.

We’ve named the dog Wookie and she is amazing. If there was going to be an instance of bad impulse control, it couldn’t have turned out better. I love having her. She’s smart (in the last couple of weeks she’s gone from completely un-housebroken to only having a few accidents) and loving, and mellow, and sweet. And she’s given us quite a bit less drama than the crazy flying jungle chickens did in one hour of their little chicken lives. The kids love her, especially Kenya, and I think Chinua will love her too, once he can look past her undeniably small-fluffy-dog exterior.