Puppies are like newborns: you never really know how much they’re going to change your life — turn everything positively upside down — until you actually have one of your own. They will both affect your life in ways that you never imagined. Our puppy, for example, has transformed our backyard. It was once a place for us to hang out with the kids, to play, to swing, to bounce, to laugh. We two hammocks and a cloth swing in addition to our wooden swing and trampoline. Then we got a fence and let the dog spend time in our backyard without us. She destroyed the hammocks; she destroyed the swing; she dug up large swaths of the backyard; she would have destroyed trampoline if she could, I’m sure.

Today, we started replacing some things, with a different plan for keeping the dog at bay. In short, we’re taking everything down every time we finish playing down there. It seems a bit extreme, but there’s no other way to keep the dog from destroying it, short of getting rid of the dog. Which has crossed my mind. More than once. Or even twice.

The irony: the person who most loves the swing and the hammocks wasn’t here. The Girl spent most of the day with a friend from the church choir, which meant we were a family of three for most of the day. And that meant the the Boy didn’t have to “call” (as in, “I call the swing!” as they go running down to the back corner of the yard) anything. But he did anyway. Just for practice.