As Valentine's Day approached, Clark wanted to find a way to surprise me. He wanted it to be special, and he kept hinting at a dog. Like that's what we needed.

We had just moved into our new place (see Move #3). It was said to be "pet friendly", but our lease technically said we were only allowed "one small cat", aka Coconut. I told Clark if he was thinking of anything (which he shouldn't have been because we couldn't afford it), he had to check with our landlord first.

Valentine's Day came. One of my sorority sisters and I went shopping for her boyfriend and Clark. I bought him a box of Reeses chocolates and a stuffed dog with a "be mine" or "love you" heart in his mouth... something to that affect. Clark says, "What a coincidence, I found you a puppy, too!"

We were headed to Asheville. Only after I had a job interview, though. I got the job (working at Calvin Klein), so it seemed to justify the fact that we were about to possibly add to our family.

We went to just look. Clark had found this puppy named "Twist" at the Asheville PetCo... Pet Smart... one of the two... who was a husky mix. We just wanted to see her, and explore the options of being parents to another pet.

I fell in love. This other family started holding her and I just couldn't imagine them taking her home. The parents were waivering. Thinking that maybe they could bring a puppy home. They said they'd go home and talk about it. They returned "Twist" to the pen.

I swooped in and picked up this positively adorable puppy and knew, instantly, that she was meant to be mine.

This is where the, "WARNING, WARNING," siren should have been going off, right? Letting me know that I was being impulsive. That I was rushing into a decision.

Even Clark was questioning it. But I wanted her.

So, we talked to the girl who had been her "foster mom". We talked to the women who were in charge. We wrote a check. We filled out the paper work.

She was ours. We only had to wait a week (or two, I can't quite remember the length of time it truly was) and we could bring her home.

As we finished our day out and about, I started to ponder... and the week (or two) passed, and I pondered some more....

By the time Clark went to get "Twist", I realized that it probably wasn't the best decision. After all, he was working, I was in school, we had only had Coconut for a couple of months and that had gotten us into trouble. Would "Twist" bring about the same things?

But when she was in the car when Clark came to get me from class (he had to go pick her up), and we decided to name her Luna (due to her right eye having a crescent of blue in it) instead of "Twist", I decided we'd see it through.

This is the period that we called our "babysitting" phase. We weren't really sure if we were going to keep Luna or not, so we were constantly inquiring if people mentioned they wanted a dog. While we were training her, raising her, and falling in love with her-- we tried to not really call her "ours".

Did I mention that our parents didn't know we had her this early? (Sorry, mom and dad.) We were so afraid of being accused of being irresponsible (which we were) and being told that we should get rid of her (which we knew), that we just kept it to ourselves that we had her.

Luna, just like Coconut, would lead to some troubles of her own.