“You might say it was a Christmas miracle.”
Longtime friend and News-Banner colleague Chet Baumgartner summed up our conversation quite well a few weeks ago after I shared with him a short tale of my efforts to buy a couple of Christmas decorations for our home.
There might have been a hint of sarcasm with the word miracle, as the whole story is a bit humorous as I think about it.
My wife Jen would say the same, as she’s mocked me a few times for my valiant efforts to stock an area home improvement retail store in search of the two decorations that I say display as much Christmas spirit as Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”
How could you not get excited about decorating your home with such decor that inspires the Christmas spirit?
First, however, a bit of background.
I have long been a dog person. My parents bought my sister and I a golden retriever when we were in elementary school, and I became a canine lover at first sight.
Jen and I brought home our first pup in 2020 just four months after we got married. We both had golden retrievers growing up and decided at the beginning of the global pandemic that it would be the perfect time to get a puppy.
Our golden retriever Santiago will turn 4 in February.
Earlier this year we started talking about getting a second dog. In February, we adopted a 5-year-old Bernese mountain dog from a rescue organization in northeast Indiana. Alicia will be 6 in January.
We can’t imagine how boring life would be without Alicia’s and Santiago’s daily shenanigans that keep us on our toes as we try to keep up with two 100-pound pooches that for the past couple of months have been shedding more hair in a day than I have on my head. If I could grow hair the way they shed their fur, my receding hairline would be a thing of the past, but I digress.
One way I have tried to learn more about each breed is to join some social media groups for owners of golden retrievers and Bernese mountain dogs. I try to read through the posts every couple of days as people from around the world post about everything from pet insurance to potty training.
In October some folks from out east posted pictures in each group of canine Christmas decor items they had bought at their local Home Depot.
One was a 2.5-foot tall Christmas golden retriever plastic statue with LED lights, and the other was of a 2.5-foot Christmas Bernese mountain dog plastic statue with LED lights. The former is clad in earmuffs and a red zip-up vest while the later is wearing a red stocking cap with a red and white scarf.
Within a day of the post showing up in the social media groups, hundreds of fellow golden retriever and Bernese mountain dog lovers had posted questions asking where to get them.
The craze had started and it wasn’t even Halloween yet. In fact, it was still September.
As soon as I saw both, I told Jen that we had to get them to add to our Christmas decorations. We made an impromptu trip to the Home Depot in northwest Fort Wayne only to discover they had not put out their Christmas decorations yet and that it wasn’t possible to order the dog decorations online.
We had to travel to Evansville that weekend to attend a wedding, and it just so happened that there was a Home Depot a few miles from the reception.
We had a few hours between the wedding and reception and just happened to drive right past the store. Clad in our wedding attire, we stopped to see if this store might have the Christmas dogs. The sales associates made some calls and even checked with a near-by store, but we struck out again.
I called the Fort Wayne store a couple of days later only to learn their Christmas decorations were still not out and they had no idea what I was talking about as I described the dogs.
A few days later, however, a social media post appeared in the Bernese mountain dog group saying the Fort Wayne store had them on the shelves.
We rushed up to the store that evening only to discover there were none on the shelves. A kind sales associate made a call to the back of the store to see if there might be any left for the crazy guy who he had been in the store a week earlier looking for Christmas decorations the last week of September.
A few minutes later, I walked out of the store with a 30-inch Christmas golden retriever in one hand and a 30-inch Christmas Bernese mountain dog in the other.
You might just say it was a Christmas miracle … or something like that.
In the next week or two, we’ll put up our Christmas decorations and hope that Santiago and Alicia will leave them alone this year and not try to chew up their doppelgängers.
The Christmas spirit, however, wasn’t with everyone who bought the dog decorations. Jen and I saw online that some folks tried to take advantage of the craze by buying up as many of the plastic canine Christmas decorations as possible and then reselling them for three times as much.
I suppose every Christmas story must have its Ebenezer Scrooge.
jdpeeper2@hotmail.com
