I found my best friend when buying towels.

2020 was quite the year. I know everyone has heard this time and time again, but if you could predict what might have happened last year....you couldn't. That might be one of my favorite parts of 2020 because it was completely unpredictable. From Covid-19 to murder hornets, 2020 was a year we will all remember for the rest of our existence.

2020 was hard on a lot of people, but it was also really great for people as well. For me, I got to work from home and have continued to work from home since March 2020. I have always wanted to do that and knew I would like it, but I didn't realize how much I would love it and how it would change me completely.

You see, to start this saga that was 2020 for me, you have to go back a few years. A few years to when I was 24, living in Austin, Texas with my brand new husband, sitting in our 1-bedroom/1-bath apartment on the 3rd floor of our building, watching TV, and deciding whether we wanted to go get new bath towels for our bathroom.

Why must we start here you ask? Well, because that day was a day that changed us for the best and when I woke up that morning, the only thing I knew we needed was towels.

It was a Saturday morning, like I said, we were discussing the towels we needed to purchase. As newlyweds, we did everything together: we grocery shopped, we ate together for every meal, we watched the same TV shows, we did it all, because we had been married for 1 month and it was blissful. It's definitely still blissful, but we have decided we get more done when one is at the store and the other is cleaning the house (saving time here people).

Anyway, back to the story. We had discussed it all: where to buy the towels, what color we should get, what kind of material, how big, also how small, who needed the larger towel, who needed the smaller towel, how many we needed, etc. It had been an all morning ordeal. We finally got up to go to the car so we could buy our towels and come back to our little oasis of an apartment, and on the way down the stairs, he looked at me and said, "What if we went to the other Target so we could stop by the animal shelter?"

Pretty sure I stopped on the steps and just looked at him without answering. "What? Do you NOT want to go look at cute puppies?!" He said to me in the most guiltily way possible.

"Well, we don't need a dog and we talked about not getting one for a year, so why get our hopes up going to a shelter?" I said trying to be the rational one in the relationship.

Before I knew it we were pulling up to the Austin Pets Alive! animal shelter in downtown Austin. You could have dragged me out of the car at that point and I still would have weighed 1000 pounds. I did not want to go in. Animal shelters are always so so sad to me and I always want to take 10 home with me when I go to them. Hence, I don't go to animal shelters often or else my husband would have not only married me but my 20 dogs too!

We get into the compound and immediately start walking around. He wanted to find the puppies and I just wanted to get the heck out of dodge (I'm southern, it's a southern thing). We pass some puppies and then a very tall, very built man comes up to us (I couldn't tell you his name for the life of me...but he looked like a Jake).

"Can I help y'all find a specific type of animal?"

Before I could even open my mouth, my husband is explaining how we are looking for a dog who would be great with kids (we don not have kids), able to stay at home for periods of time alone, and also very cuddly because he would like to cuddle with the dog on a daily basis.

I was stunned to say the least. CLEARLY, he had been thinking about this for a long time. The man decides to take us around to see a few different dogs. The first one is a sweet, sweet 4 year old boxer who was absolutely precious, but neither of us felt like she was our dog. ALSO, let me point out that I didn't think any of these dogs were our dog....

The next dog he took us by was a Pitbull mix. My husband had a Staffordshire Terrier growing up and that is basically all he has ever wanted since. This precious girl, was exactly what he had been wanting. Then we realized that our apartment complex had breed restrictions so that one was out of the question completely.

As we round the corner, I was getting tired of seeing all the dogs and puppies that don't have home just sitting on these sad cots and drinking water out of sad bowls.

Don't get me wrong, APA! is a fantastic opportunity and charity that takes animals that are on kill lists all over Central Texas and gives them the ability to find homes, foster homes, and save their lives. It is absolutely amazing, but seeing dogs without warm homes, is so depressing.

Anyway, we come around this corner to the outside of the compound and there are about two families crowded around this corner kennel. I look into the fence and I see an average size dog that I know is a puppy from the size of his paws and his little floppy ears, staring up at me with big brown eyes. He was all black with a white chest and his name was Roper.

I was the one who asked the guy helping us if we could play with him to see if he liked us. So he asked us to walk over to a fenced in area and he would bring little Roper over to us and we had to wait until the puppy came over to us to see if we had a connection (you might laugh at that, but if the dog hates you, why would you want it?!). We walked over, sat down on lawn chairs, and waited until this nice man brought Roper over to us. The way he brought him in was on a leash and on the opposite side of the enclosure we had sat down in. As he unhooked his leash, Roper started to smell around and then trotted over to us. He sat down at my feet and leaned into me.

When I say, I have never fallen in love faster than in that moment, that is an actual fact. I looked at my husband and I nearly burst into tears. Roper wandered around and came back to sit near my husband and did the same thing he did to me after making his rounds of sniffing all the things and doing his business.

The man who was helping us sat down next to me as I was trying to come up with all the reasons why this was a bad idea and he looked at me and said, "There is always going to be a reason NOT to adopt a dog. Travel, jobs, family commitments, etc. The reasons matter most of the time, but if you want this dog, take him because you two seem like a great couple and he would be lucky to have a home like yours."

My husband looked at me and I gave him the "a-ok" look, and we stood up and went to start the application process of taking Roper home to be ours.

Everyone said we shouldn't get a dog. Everyone said we needed to focus on ourselves that first year of marriage. What no one understood was that while my husband was waiting for his greencard (he's australian), he was home alone all day and didn't have anything to do. What no one understood was that all he wanted was to have a dog to take care of during the day. What no one understood was how lonely it was for him at home when I was at work and he didn't have any work to do.

Roper was going to change that.

We took him home that day and we named him Loki from the Avenger series because he is all black and a little mischievous. He became our boy that day. The day I just wanted to buy towels for our little apartment. The day I said I didn't want a dog and we definitely didn't need a dog. The day my husband gained a new best friend to keep him company while he was waiting.

That day changed our lives. I tell you all of that because in 2020, Loki was my best friend. We were all stuck at home, not going out, not doing anything besides working and trying to not get corona, and Loki was my pal. He would wake up with me and snuggle in between my husband and I, he would eat his breakfast while I drank my coffee and got my day started, he would require me to take him on 3-4 walks a day so I could get out of the house and not be bored out of my mind staring out the window, he forced me to look at his diet so I was making sure he was being fed the best food possible (on our budget of course!), and through all of that he made me aware that I will be a great mom one day.

Loki teaches me things daily. He is a snuggle bug, a delight, a terror in the mud puddles, active athlete bouncing around in the backyard constantly, a protector of all things, and makes me a better person because of his joy for life.

2020 might have been hard, but it was one of my favorite years because it was the year I got to spend at home with my handsome husband and amazing dog. He thinks he's a person, and I'm going to have to agree with that statement because he might as well be.

I've seen many a social media post about people finding their animal best friends over the past year and I hope you did as well, because finding your pup who you can treasure on a daily basis, makes sure you're doing your work by typing on every keyboard in the house, ransacking the trashcan for your leftovers, tearing up every piece of paper cause it's fun, and just makes you more active because they need to be more active turns every day life into an absolute adventure.

So go do a thing today. Go out and find your best friend. If you're feeling down, or you're having a hard time emotionally. This animal, this dog, will turn your life upside down in the best way. So go. Do it. I'm telling you it's so worth it.