Fur Babies

This holiday season, there's no better place to get cozy holiday gifts for all your people than Aerie. From soft sweaters to everyday intimates and activewear, Aerie has the comfiest pieces made for the real you. And don't forget to treat yourself, too, while you're at it. You've earned it. Find your nearest aerie store or shop online@aerie.com. give love real. Can we just, like, own the fact that dogs are God's gift from heaven? Like, just to love human beings like they really are? They're amazing. They help us. They help the blind. They help people. They can smell, like, a diabetic attack coming on. They train dogs to do this. Did you know this?

It's amazing.

It's so amazing.

And it begs the question, what is the purpose of cats? Like, that's what I want to know without sounding too.

Cats can be such a blessing, too. I will say that.

All I know is I'm just allergic. I was one time as a pastor asked, do you think there will be dogs in heaven? And I said, maybe. But I'm also pretty sure there will be cats in hell. Hey, welcome back to the Naked Marriage podcast. We're doing summer quickies. I love this time of year. I hope you guys are having a great summer. I hope you're not too sunburned. I hope that you're getting some time with family and cookouts and dipping your feet in the pool and all that kind of stuff. So thanks for taking some time. We got a fun episode for you today. We've never, ever done an episode on pets.

No.

But we're gonna talk about fur babies today. That's right. I was so hairy as a baby that I was a fur baby, according to my mom, that I was just wooly. But that's not the kind of fur babies we're talking about. Talking about dogs, cats, all of them.

Well, even guinea pigs. They were. We had some fur baby guinea pigs.

As our first pets for our very first pets. And then when we went to South America, it was a delicacy to eat guinea piggy. And I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm like, guys, this was a pet for me.

We loved this. And let me just tell you, guinea pigs, they can swim, first of all, and they squeal. They like. Like a cat purrs. They have these different squeals. Look it up on the Internet. It's a real thing. Like, it's pretty cool.

Really? Yeah. Interesting, fascinating animals. But Ashley's allergic, so we had to quit that. But we, We've tried different dogs through the years. And just first off, the decision of when and if to get a pet is one of the big marriage decisions. And so listen back to our recent episode on how. How to make big decisions and apply that to the pet thing. Because you don't want to just show up with a pet. Ashley never. We were watching a show one time and this husband in the show showed up to the house with a dog.

It was Diary of a Wimpy.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid. We love those movies. And Ashley was so mad. I was offended that, like, I had to sleep on the couch that night. Like, she looked at me and just said, never do that to me. I said, don't worry, I won't.

Well, his poor wife, you know, she's got these three boys and. And then he brought home a dog and was like, they just need a dog. The kids need a dog. Without even consulting her.

This is a.

And I was like, he's in trouble.

Like, that is bad as he should be. Husband, wife, decision. We've. Through the years we've had dogs, we've. We've had a few that we had to give back, which makes us sound terrible.

They have a term for that. It's called rehoming.

Rehoming. Yeah.

Now let me tell you, you guys don't be mad at us, okay? I know that there's going to be some of you who want to make a nasty comment, but let me explain. I am very much. And Dave as well. We are dog people. Like, we love dogs. We grew up with dogs. Dave grew up on land. And like his favorite dog, her name is Icy because they found her underneath their deck in the middle of winter. And she was pregnant or. No, she was part of a litter. And the rest of the litter passed away, but she survived. And then she, since then was kind of like the. How do I say this? The favorite female dog of the neighborhood.

She was in heat forever.

She was in heat and giving birth.

I learned a lot, a lot about the birds and the bees by. Just watch. I see. Like, she was like a rite of passage for other neighborhood dogs. We won't get too deep into that.

Spread the news. Yeah, but she was a precious dog. She lived, you guys, till she was 20 years old. We think that she was a golden retriever, cocker spaniel mix. And his mom actually rescued her from the middle of an iced over lake where she got stuck with her arthritis in the middle of this iced over lake. And your mom Went out there and I mean, my goodness. So anyway, you know, we love dogs. Like, we absolutely love him. And early in our marriage, we got a dog. Like, we. Our neighbor came over and said, hey, I have this basset hound. And my like, or I know someone who has a basset hound. And they can't keep this basset hound because their apartment building won't allow pets, and they have to live in this particular apartment. And they said, can you meet this dog and see if you want this dog? And we were at the time already thinking and praying about getting a dog, which is a big decision. And we weren't even a year married yet. Right, sweetie? And we were very early married.

Yeah, this was very early.

Like, three months or something.

But, you know, we met Maggie Mae.

Maggie Mae, named after the Rod Stewart song Maggie May. That's right. And she had you guys. The best thing about having a dog is you may name them one thing, but they're gonna have so many different nicknames. Like Maggleton, Maggers, Magamalia.

Yeah, she had a bunch of random nicknames. Precious. Fun, full of personality dog. And we loved that dog for, you know, for several years. But then when we had children, which is, you know, it changes everything, we brought our first baby home. Little Cooper. He was so precious. Still is so precious. Even though now he's almost 17. Or is 17.

He is 17.

Wow. Where does the time go? She just could not adjust. Like, she would growl at him, and.

She started pooping everywhere, and. And she. She got aggressive with him.

That's when we were like, okay, okay.

We had to re home her, and.

It was so sad, but we. We had to find her a good home. We found this. This precious couple that, you know, wanted to take her, and so she got to go live the dog dream on their farm. And. And it was a tough decision, but, you know, we had to, at that time, do what was right for the family. And then. And then through the years, we were trying to find the right time to get a dog. Eventually, we got with the breeder to get a golden retriever, and.

Which I had grown up with. And Icy was part golden, and we. So we were like, golden, they're perfect for a family.

It's gonna be so good. But this golden we got was, like, alpha.

I mean, she was like. We had a trainer say, this is about the most alpha female I've ever worked with. It's gonna take two years to break her. And I looked at you. We had a baby at the time.

Nope, we do not have two Years. We just had our fourth kid and I'm like.

And she was really aggressive with our baby. In fact, she. She nipped him.

Yeah. So we, we just took her back to the breeder and we're like, you know, we're sorry. We, we only had her like a week.

We said, we know we can't get her money back, but we. So again, please, please don't write us with hate mail, you guys.

We.

We really. None of these are willy nilly decisions. So her name was Sugar Bear. We took her back, she got rehomed into an awesome home that didn't have young children. And I'm sure she's making a great dog now. I mean, I'm grful dogs. So. So anyway, like, we as dog people, we're like, we have to get a fur baby at some time because there's just something so awesome about having a pet as a child. And so in between, we had the guinea pigs, but then I, like, my eyes were almost swollen shut from cleaning the cages and being around the fur. And I'm allergic to cats, so, you know, it makes sense that I'm allergic to guinea pigs. So anyway, finally, you know, when we were living in Texas, the Humane Society, I got an email that said, the Humane Society is so overrun. This is before COVID Not a Covid dog. I know a lot of people adopted during COVID but they said our humane societies just have so many dogs that we are literally giving them away. And so I was like, well, let's. I'm gonna take a couple of our kids and just go look and see what they have. And so we visited with several dogs, all sweet, but just some of them were kind of scary to our little. Our youngest, who I think was probably two at the time, and maybe three. And. And I just was like, you know what? I'm not finding it here. And so we went back home and I was like, we're still gonna. We're not taking, taking this off the table, but we're just gonna pray about this. Well, I guess, like the next weekend we were, I guess bored or something, and our two middle kids were like, can we go look at the Humane Society? Because you didn't take us. And I'm like, well, they're not free anymore. And they're like, but it's the Humane Society. It's not that expensive. And. And I was like, okay, who knows? And I wasn't even thinking we'd get a dog. And we go, and. Because they just had this huge clear out of the dogs that Were all adopted. There were literally only like seven dogs in the entire shelter. And so one by one, we ran around to every cage, looked at the dogs, and they were barking and crazy. And I was like, I cannot add any more crazy to our house. And so we come around to the very last cage, and there's two little chihuahua looking dogs just sitting there, as sweet as can be. And they said, oh, my gosh, can we please see this dog? And to be honest with you guys, I grew up with a golden retriever. Actually several golden retrievers. Dave also grew up with big dogs. I had a preconceived notion that little dogs were all very like, yippee and would bite your feet and your ankles and just not pleasant. Yes. And I'm so sorry I had that impression. But I did. And I had always thought chihuahuas too, were kind of aggressive and wouldn't be a good fit. But the kids were just so taken by this. By our. Who became. Chichi was so taken by this little dog. So I was like, well, let's visit with the dog. So they had this little visiting area, visited with Chichi for an hour, and she was just the sweetest thing ever. And they were like, please, please, can we take her home? And I called Dave because he didn't happen to be there with us, and he's like, listen, we've been through so much with dogs. If you guys feel like this is our dog, let's it. We paid like $150 or whatever it was. She got her shots and. And came home. And I will be honest with you guys, I was so braced for how hard, you know, when you bring a puppy home, it's sleepless nights for a while. You know, they're adjusting to their kennel. They're also in a strange place. You know, there's all this whimpering and barking and Chichi, honestly, it was just so smooth. Like, I kept on waiting for the shoe to drop.

We had had a lot of other. Other experiences, which is pretty normal. Which is normal. Yeah. But Chichi was great and still is. I mean, we've had her for huge, long road trip, and she rode in the van and just tries to cuddle with all of us. And it has been such a gift to our family. And so, like, that's part of why we want to do this episode is just to anything that has enhanced our life, our marriage, in any way, we want to share it. Every good thing is meant to be shared. With Black Friday savings at the Home Depot, you can get up to 40% off, plus up to an extra thousand dollars off select appliances like lg, America's most reliable line of appliances. Check out the newest LG refrigerator with new mini craft ice straight from the dispenser. Shop Black Friday savings on select LG appliances. Plus get free delivery now at the Home Depot. Free delivery on appliance purchases of $396 or more. Offer valid11.5 through12.3 US only. See store online for details.

Hey, welcome into Walgreens. Hi, there.

Hey.

All right, hon. I'll grab the gift wrap cards and. Oh, those stuffed animals the girls want. Great.

And I'll grab the string lights and some. How about I grab some cough drops? This is not just a quick trip to Walgreens.

I'm fine, honey. Well, just in case.

You know what they say, Tis the season. This is help staying healthy through the holidays. Walgreens and so.

And chichers. So she's chichi. Chichers. Chicharron. Which in Spanish is pork rind. Pork rind.

Chichi Rodriguez.

Chichi Rodriguez.

Who's a golfer. Uh, we've got.

I don't. Gosh, what else do we call her? Oh, my girl.

Yeah.

Not my girl. My girl.

Yeah. And sometimes we just call her Beast.

Beast. And I. I say there's emotionally support, emotional support animals. We call her our emotional support beast. And I think that should be a thing, personally. But she really is, you guys. Like, there's a real. And they're real clinical support. Like, there's trained dogs.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, can we just, like, own the fact that dogs are God's gift from heaven, like, just to love human beings? Like, they really are? They're amazing. They help us. They help the blind. They help people. They can smell, like, a diabetic attack coming on. They train dogs to do this. Did you know this?

It's amazing.

It's so amazing.

And it begs the question, what is the purpose of cats? Like, that's what I want to know. Without sounding too.

Cats can be such a blessing, too. I will say that.

I. All I know is I'm just allergic. I was one time, as a pastor, asked, do you think there will be dogs in heaven? And I said, maybe. But I'm also pretty sure there will be cats in hell. I just. I can't theologically prove it. But you can picture it, right? That when you get to heaven, there are, like, golden retrievers running around frolicking. But in hell, you just picture, like.

Like, welcome to hell.

Cat clawing and hairballs and hissing. I'm just kidding. Cat People don't email me. I know. Cats are great, too.

Cats are wonderful. I grew up.

My brother had a cat, Scratchy cat. Scratchy cat, which was great. Even though they bit me, it would bite it, would want you to pet it, and. But then the second it wanted you to stop petting it, instead of just walking away, it would bite you. So it would come up to you, like, pet me. And you would pet it, but you would have to just guess when it wanted you to stop. It gave you no signal. It would just be like, I'm done with that, and grab your hand and bite you and, well, tell.

Tell the people what you did to scratch a cat or what your brother did to Scratch.

That was Freddie.

Oh, my gosh, there's another one.

Okay, so Freddie. Okay. We're going way back in time. Poor Freddy was a sweet cat. We had before Scratchy, and my brothers were so small. Be careful about getting pets when your kids are super little because they don't know what to do.

You want these pets to be treated well. Yeah.

So one day in the summer, we had lost Freddy, and we couldn't figure out where Freddie was. And finally, it was time to get the mail. And I opened up the mailbox, and in this sweaty, dehydrated, tortured cat is in the mailbox going. And I guess one of my little brothers is probably like, three or four at the time, thought that it would be fun to put Freddie in the mailbox. And so then years later, we lost Freddy, and we thought that Freddie had died. My dad. We looked everywhere. My dad came home from working with guys, listen, we need to have a family meeting. And it was basically a funeral for Freddie. He goes, I just drove by the road, and I saw this cat that had been run over. And I'm almost sure it was Freddy. It looked just like Freddie. And so we all just kind of, like, cried and had a moment. And then that night, I'm walking outside, and we had this detached garage, and up in the window, this detached garage where we had, like, stuff piled up. Freddy jumped up into the window, and he goes. And I thought it was pet cemetery. I thought, the ghost of Freddy is back to get me. But it was just Freddy had been locked in the garage for days. And so this poor cat. And then Freddy's doppelganger had gotten run over. This poor cat had been through it, and then eventually he did disappear. I think he might have run away just like an escape from prison, because my little brothers had not been good. They sport animals or a coyote or Something got him out in the country where we finally moved. I don't know, really. I wasn't planning to share all this, but this is some of the most random stuff we've ever shared on the Naked Marriage podcast. The reason why we're talking about any of this is because pets can enhance life, and they're precious. And I'm sorry I teased about cats. They're great, too.

People love cats. And my. My brother, brother in law and sister in law have one named Tomcat. They love Tom. He's so sweet. And they have a dog as well. And the dog and the cat actually get along. Like, it's amazing when that happens. But Luna is their dog, and she's just precious. But I'm telling you, dogs can be especially, like, again, again, I couldn't have a cat because I'm highly allergic, but I actually like cats. I think they're sweet, but I just. They don't like me back because my body shuts down and it's really nasty with the allergens and things.

But you live in a place you're allergic to, and you know that is true. So maybe I have a lot of.

Allergies, but I was just gonna say, like, I'm like, just to give you a picture of the family I grew up in and how fur babies are literally. I mean, it's just part of the family. So I grew up with a golden retriever named Honey Bear, who I was obsessed with you guys. And, like, as a. I remember even as like, a preteen teenager, like, talking to Bear, like, we called her Bear for short. Talking to Bear, just about my day or about what I'm going through and, like, laying on her. And she was just so sweet. We have so many pictures of me with this dog to the point where I wanted to be a vet for a long time until I found out that vets put dogs down. And I just was like, I could never do that. So anyway, I was so obsessed with bear that when I went to church camp for the first time when I was 12, my mom sent me mail where she bear was shedding. Obviously, in the summer, she got up some of Bear's, like, hair shed and, like, taped it to my card so that I could smell bear and, like, feel her fur. It's so sweet and creepy. I know.

Creepy.

But let me tell you, that's how obsessed we were. And my mom and dad today, like, we tease them. They've had a bunch of King Charles Cavalier pups. They've had five over the years, several have passed away tragically. But my mom, I tell my mom, like, I'm like, you're obsessed with them. She even has, like, pictures of them all over the house. It's kind of. She's like the dog lady. But I'm telling you, the joy that it brings my parents.

Oh, it's been great for them. It. It really has.

It's been so sweet.

And they rescue and it's giving like a. It's really energized. I would say even their marriage just. They love these dogs, rescuing these dogs, caring for these dogs. So it can be a gift to your marriage. Anything that can be a gift to your marriage. We want to share here exactly part of why we might be the most.

Random podcast, maybe the most random.

But you know what? Summer quickies. You're going to get it all you're getting, and this is what we want you to do, guys, is the next step. Go to our Instagram at Dave and Ashley Willis or where we've posted about.

This episode and we've posted a picture of Cheech.

And I want you guys in the comments there to post a picture of your fur baby along with their name and at least one nickname you have for that fur baby.

Did you know you have them?

You know you have them. And, and, and let it just be a fun online conversation. And we'll, we'll get back to some more serious topics, too. But here on the podcast, we're going to be able to talk about everything. So thanks for sticking around.

Absolutely. And if you've ever even had, like, both of you, let me, let me say this. Both of you have had that thought, like, maybe we should get a dog. Really think about it, pray about it, but also know that it might just be, like, the sweetest blessing to your marriage and family. And just consider it. You know, consider it. And if you're cat people, get a cat. Try some guinea pigs. Fish. We've had fish before. Whatever floats your boat. I'm telling you, pets can be such a gift. So love on those fur babies. I know, I know. Fish don't have fur, but you know what we mean. Pets like fin baby, fin baby, you know, they're awesome, too. They're fun to watch. We had. Let me just say this really quick, and then I'm gonna have to go. So we had this fish. Like, we had had fish that made our move back. Move back to Georgia. Like, we protected them because we had this fish named Reginald that our son just loved. And Reginald made it. But then Reginald. And Reginald passed away. So then he went to a fair, I don't know, six months ago or maybe eight months ago, and there was. He won a fish there. And he named this. This fish. Or was it Reginaldo? Was that fish before. And he named this fish Reginald. So, like, you know, he loves this name. But anyway, we kept on waiting for this fish to die because it's from a fair. Well, it ends up being, like, the most entertaining fish, first of all, like, it would do these flips around the tank.

It was like a circus fish.

It was so fun. And it lived, like, six months. And we were really amazed and we.

Were greatly entertained by him.

Greatly entertained. He was a precious fish. We tragically, you know, sadly, he passed away and we had to bury him. But we loved him while we had him.

So good, guys.

Yes.

Well, hey, thank you. You guys stuck around to the very.

End for the silliest of of random episodes.

So you are true, true Naked Marriage podcast fans. And so I just want you to know right now. You listening? Yes, you.

We appreciate you.

You guys are our people and we love and appreciate you. We'll see you next time.

Bye, guys. Make their holiday unforgettable with a gift that says it all from Pandora Jewelry. A gift that tells a story and shows, you know, theirs that doesn't just sparkle but speaks. This season, give a gift that's perfectly theirs. Whether you're shopping for a shiny surprise for your significant other, matching bracelets to celebrate your friendship, or a heartfelt gift for a family member, say more this holiday season with pandora. Shop@pandora.net or your local Pandora store.