About Us
My husband and I met in April of 2013 after being introduced to each other by a mutual friend. We immediately hit it off and started dating. Our first date he told me he had been married before and my first response was do you have any children and he said “just a dog.” Well I immediately had to laugh that he had a chihuahua of all dogs.
I had no experience with small dogs at all, growing up we had a 100 pound golden retriever/lab mix. I had two rescue cats already that were spoiled rotten and we weren’t sure what everyone would think of each other. They had never been around dogs and one of them was very skittish around anyone but me. However being an animal person I was dying to meet her.
I only heard rumors about chihuahuas and how terrible they were, well Lollie definitely made me eat my words.
He surprised me one night at my apartment by bringing her over and she immediately took to me. She quickly made my lap her new comfort zone to the complete shock of John. We joked a lot about how she abandoned him as soon as she met me.
In February of 2015 while John was working he took a call about an abandoned dog on the side of the road. He told me the dog had a broken leg and he was going to the shelter, they were waiting for him to get picked up. He sent me a picture of him, and I told him if that dog goes to the pound they’re going to put him down with a broken leg. I left work early and drove 30 minutes to meet John and take the dog to our vet. We stopped first and got him a bed and blanket. We wanted to make sure he didn’t have fleas or mange before we brought him home to our other pets. He stayed overnight at our vet’s office to get a full work up since it was late in the afternoon and they weren’t going to get all the results until the morning.
The next day our vet called to let us with his test results. He weighed in at 52 pounds (he’s currently around 64) his ribs and spine were showing and he was very malnourished. Luckily he didn’t have heart-worms, however he did have intestinal worms that they were going to treat. He didn’t have fleas or mange but were unsure how long he was on the street for. His x-rays showed his stomach had a lot of small bones inside. The x-ray on his leg determined he didn’t have a broken hind leg but it was dislocated, he had some muscle atrophy from not using it. The best option for treatment on the leg was a femoral head ostectomy, it was a surgery to essentially cut off the ball joint of the leg and let scar tissue regrow in its place. We scheduled the surgery for a couple of days away and we brought him home, we had the conversation before bringing him home that if he showed any signs of aggression to our chihuahua or cats we would find him a home or foster him until we did.
We brought him to our apartment with John holding the leash at the door, Lollie charged at him barking and he hid behind John and cowered. We instantly knew we would have nothing to worry about. He turned out to be our big baby very quickly, it took a little while for him to come out of his shell. He had a lot of separation anxiety and fear. But after a month or so he turned into a big puppy, full of energy and life. He loved our cats Heidi and Annie, Heidi would rub up against his chin to get his attention and Annie would steal his bed.
We had a lot of fun and adventures in the meantime. We had been talking about marriage, On October 10 we were going to meet some friends of ours at Nottoway Plantation for John’s birthday and then have dinner there later. Well me being me I tried to surprise John with tour tickets of the plantation house because he’s a huge history nerd, little did I know he had other plans.
After the tour was over, John brought me toward the front of the plantation house while there was another wedding going on to the side of the house. I kept fussing at him to get away I didn’t want to ruin someone’s wedding. Next thing I know he was on his knee asking me to marry him. Then I was the one interrupting the wedding with my excitement.
We got married in my hometown of New Orleans in April of 2017 after 4 years of dating. We tried to get married on the anniversary of our first date, however the day was already booked at the venue we choose. While we were getting in the limo to leave my Dad was taking bets with our friends about when we would get pregnant.
We knew we wanted to start a family right away in case it did take us longer to get pregnant. I went to my OBGYN around the time of our wedding to discuss my concerns about trying to get pregnant. I had several ovarian cysts in the past and was concerned about the possibility of PCOS. I also struggled with very heavy painful periods and was concerned about endometriosis because it ran on my maternal side of the family. My doctor told me “I think everyone should wait a year after getting married before getting pregnant”. Needless to say that was the last time I went to that doctor, I immediately started looking for a new OBGYN to take my concerns seriously.
Continue to our infertility journey in the post below.
The Wilkins Quads 