At my baby shower for my firstborn son, Derek, I received a very cute stuffed blue dog as a gift. I cannot even recall at this point who it was that gave it to us, but ironically, I had given the same dog to a girlfriend of mine a few weeks earlier for her first baby shower.

I began showing Derek the dog and laying it beside him as we played on the floor very early on, and it wasn’t long before he was playing with the dog a lot. We gave him the name Blue Dog (I know, very original! LOL) some time later on when Derek was old enough to associate a person or thing with a name.

As soon as we returned home, I began to search the internet for another dog just like Blue Dog so that we could “surprise” Derek with the return of his beloved pet.  Unfortunately, the dog appeared to be out of stock and no longer in production.  I even went as far as to call my friend whom I had given the same dog to a couple of weeks before I got Derek’s, but she said she didn’t know where her son’s dog was either.  So, as a court of last resort, I scanned ebay, and low and behold – I found the exact same dog with one small modification – the price tag!  This “gently used” version looked to be in great shape, but was over twice the amount that I knew this dog had cost new, but what was I, as the mother of a very distraught toddler, to do? I did what most other mom’s would do in the same situation – I sighed heavily, and clicked on the “buy it now” button.  🙂

I have to say that the dog arrived in great shape, though getting him in the mail was a bit of a fiasco as we were in the process of moving at the time, and the dog got sent to several places before FINALLY making it into our hands.  However, the look on Derek’s face when we handed him his Blue Dog was well worth the outrageous price we spent to get Blue Dog’s twin brother.

Since that time, over two years ago, we have lost and found, lost and found, that #*($&!! dog more times than I can count.  Sometimes it has been hours or days, and once, more than a week before the little buggar was found (in Randy’s and my bathroom linen closet of all places!), but when we do know his whereabouts, it’s always on top of Derek’s big boy bed where he waits patiently for his best friend to return each night. Blue Dog is getting rather dirty and scraggly looking, and he’s lost a lot of his fluffiness, but that’s okay with us. We have never told him that this is a different dog, and to this day he still doesn’t know that it’s not his original companion.  We figure some day when he asks, or reads this blog post, he’ll know, but until then we can just be happy in the knowledge that we made our little boy very, very happy.  🙂