I never intended to take (checks notes) a 5 month break from this project. In fact, the last blog post I made on August 14, 2025 was a mere 24 hours before I decided to throw our lives into a state of chaos that we are still trying to manage.
This is Rollins.
Depending on which human in the house you ask, he is named after punk legend Henry Rollins (me) or a very old jazz musician named Sonny Rollins (Danny). His alter ego (which he embraces on a regular basis) is named Hank and he is an absolute menace.
He was in a rural shelter in Anson County, NC (2 hours one way from my house) and popped up in my Instagram feed randomly one afternoon. I showed the post to Danny thinking he would tell me it was a silly idea to go meet a dog that lived so far away based on a social media post. It turns out my husband is just a giant enabler and before I knew it, I was making the trip to meet him.
This is the social media photo that was on the Anson County shelter post that got me.
We brought him home on August 15th. We were kind of dreading the car ride back with him, but, it turns out that was nothing compared to how he made himself right at home once we got back to the house. Immediately after he walked through the threshold of our door he zoomied right into the living room (like he owned it) and everything since has been a whirlwind of sleep deprivation, destruction and chaos.
I sold most of my sneaker collection to pay for training (worth every penny) and vet bills. Crate training has been an adventure. Currently, we are averaging around 15,000 steps daily walking (it was closer to 19,000/day before training helped us learn to manage his energy) , he came to us with a severe case of Giardia (which we still haven’t gotten a clear test on) and raging allergies. Every day he wakes me up somewhere between 4:30-5:30am without fail.
But, overall, he is a pretty good boy. Our friends/family all think he is “perfect.” While I would not go that far – he is good natured, loves people and if we can ever get a clear Giardia test we think he will do well around other dogs.
So yea, that’s where I have been the past 6 months. Between Rollins and work, my brain has not been functioning at a high enough level to do much of anything requiring extra effort. I do want to get back to doing this project and have a few recipes that I made, photographed and never posted.
Here’s to hoping that I can get my life back in some semblance of order soon and can get started back up on this project again. No promises on a posting schedule but it would be nice to get back into a more normal routine at some point. Fingers crossed!