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Life at the Novitski house during quarantine was pretty boring. There were only so many songs Donny could write, and only so many times Julia could clean the entire house. They needed something different, but there were limited options due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Donny was scrolling through Facebook one afternoon as he did for nearly 5 hours every day when he came across an ad from a local dog rescue group. Everyone knows that Facebook listens to your conversations, but when had Donny & Julia talked about dogs? That gave him an idea.
He opened his internet browsing app and typed in the website for their local animal shelter and started scrolling through all of the adoptable dogs. He was disappointed when he saw that most of them were Pit Bulls, which were banned in his town. He was about to give up when the last dog on the bottom of the page caught his eye, making him smiled so big.
“Hey babe, come here and look at this,” he shouted towards the kitchen where Julia was cleaning out the fridge.
“Awwww! What a cute puppy!” she squealed when he showed her a picture. “Whose is it?”
“Well, I was maybe thinking it could be ours. We need some excitement around here,” he replied.
“Are you serious?” she gasped.
“What? You don’t want a puppy?” he asked, furrowing his brow.
“No, I do, but do you think it’s the right time?”
“I think so. We are bored and there’s nothing much we can do. It would be nice to have a little puppy running around. We have the yard for it.”
“Ok,” she smiled. “How do we get it? Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Male. We have to put in an application. I can’t guarantee we won’t get him, but it doesn’t hurt to try.”
After filling out the application, they sat on the couch and watched House Hunters while they waited to see if they’d get a call from the animal shelter.
A couple of hours later Donny’s phone rang and he couldn’t contain the excitement in his voice when he was told they were approved and could stop by and meet the dog to make sure they really wanted him.
When they got down there and saw the little puppy, a 3-month-old black poodle, they instantly fell in love. After they finished signing the adoption forms and paying for him, they left and went straight to the pet store to get supplies.
“He’s so cute! What should we name him?” Julia asked once in the car.
“I’m terrible with names. Noodle the poodle?” he replied.
“No,” she laughed. “We need something unique,” she said as she held the puppy up in front of her face to get a good look at him.
“Nick? Davy? Johnny? Jimmy? Wayne?”
“We’re not naming them after a band member,” she said as she rolled her eyes.
“Donny Jr?”
“Shouldn’t we save that name for when we have children?” she asked and turned to look at him to see his reaction. They hadn’t discussed having kids, despite being married for a year.
“Your maiden name?” he asked. He really was crap at names.
“We are not naming a dog or child Trojan!” she nearly screamed as her eyes got bigger at the thought.
“Sparky? Boo-Boo? Fido?”
“Let me look on a dog name website,” she said as she pulled her phone out. “I’ll read off names, just tell me if you like any of them, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Buddy, Coco, Gizmo, Hank, Jack, Marley, Moose, Rocky, Sam, Simba, Tank, Winston.” She read off the names on the first website she found, but neither of them liked the names so she found a different one.
“I’d like a name that has a couple of nicknames. I hate names that you can’t shorten,” Donny said as he continued to drive. Unfortunately, the pet store was on the other side of town and even with everything closed, there was still a significant amount of traffic.
“Oooh, what about Bandit?” Julia asked as she scrolled through another list.
“That one is okay, I like that it has band in it, but I don’t think you can get a nickname out of that. Bandy?”
“Hmm. It would be cool to have the name relate to how we met, though,” she replied.
“I’ve got it!” Donny gasped as he held his pointer finger up like he had an idea. “What do you think about Nova?”
“I love it! It’s unique, but is so special to us,” the woman nearly squealed for the second time that day.
“His nickname could be Novy or Nov.”
Julia rolled her eyes in response. She had a feeling baby naming was going to be hard with Donny, if they ever decided to have children.
When they finally arrived at the pet store, they went a little crazy and bought everything they could possibly need for their new puppy. Toys, collar, leash, bed, kennel, food, potty training supplies, and even some cute clothes because who doesn’t love to dress a dog up?
Nearly $300 later, they left the store and went home. Julia worked on getting Nova’s collar with his name tag on his tiny neck and then proceeded to take 50 pictures of him to send to her mom, showing her the new member of their family. Julia knew she would be a little disappointed it wasn’t news about expecting a baby, but she would still be excited for them.
Once they got home and unloaded everything, they showed Nova the house and took him to the backyard to show him where he was supposed to go potty.
That night, the 2 of them laid on the couch with Nova cuddled up in front of them while they watched The Secret Life of Pets 2, both agreeing that watching a movie about dogs and animals was the perfect way to end their day and start their new life with the newest band member.