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Because of Barkley
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: All You Need Is Love
By Kara Johnson You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets.
~Nora Ephron
To be honest, I wasn't much of a dog person when I first met Barkley, Jim's four-year-old black Lab. Jim and I had barely been dating a week when he brought me to his house for the first time. We were coming home from a nice dinner and were greeted by the competing smells of I-better-clean-my-house-to-impress-this-girl Lysol and diarrhea because Barkley had had a tummy ache. Normally, I would have plugged my nose and waited outside until the mess was cleaned up, but the look on both of their faces somehow convinced me to stay and help. Jim was horrified, and Barkley was ears-back, tail-between-his-legs embarrassed. He slithered away to hide in the next room, and Jim and I threw first impression etiquette to the wind and picked up our mops. It was putrid and disgusting, but as we dry heaved and plugged our noses together, I got a glimpse into the special bond between the man I was falling for and the dog he loved so much. Jim knelt down to pet Barkley's face, and told him he wasn't mad. He kissed him on the nose, and then turned to me, smiled sheepishly and said, "Well, welcome to our home!" (Keep reading) | 
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