From the archives. I wrote this 4 years ago when the no-count, sorry-ass, egg-sucking border collie came home. She's still not my dog, and I still don't even like her.

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From a childhood trip to the beach, I remember a wooden board that I saw in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum. It started out as just a regular board, but someone had painted it over and over for every day of their life.

Day after day, with a different color, another layer was added until it was hundreds of times thicker than it started. As a kid, I was fascinated by all the layers of paint that you could see because they'd cut the board in half.

Today, I'm fascinated by the level of persistence it took for that person to paint that board, day after day, for all those years.

It’s been about six years since Julia first told me she wanted a dog, and for most of that time, I’ve squashed the idea.

I had no interest in another mouth to feed and a long list of reasons as to why her getting a dog made absolutely no sense.

But she persisted.

When her repeated demands bore no fruit, she enlisted the children. Now, rather than one person asking when we could get a dog, I had a small army.

When that army failed to advance, Julia turned to social media. Suddenly everyone was photoshopping my family pictures so that a border collie was in every damn one. I started getting emails and messages from people wanting to know why I wouldn’t let Julia get a dog.

It was funny for a while, but then my patience wore thin, and things got ugly. We started fighting about it. I was so sick of hearing about this dog! We even went to a session with our marriage counselor about it. She told Julia to not say anything else to me about a dog.

And she didn’t.

For about three months. But then it started up again.

“I want a dog.”

“I want a dog!!”

“I WANT A DOG!!!!!!!”

“LISTEN TO ME!!!! I WANT A DOG!!!! I NEEEEEEEED A DOG!!!!!!!”

After hounding me for the millionth time I finally relented. Last August, for her birthday, I paid the deposit for a female blue merle border collie.

She was born in February of this year.

She finished basic training this week.

And, believe it or not, Julia’s dog is coming home this afternoon.

Welcome home, mutt. If nothing else you are proof of what we can accomplish in this life if only we are willing to be persistent.