Many times the best decisions you make in life sneak up on you.

It was a beautiful late August evening, our last night in Prague. Looking back on this from almost eight years on, it remains one of my favourite travel memories because of what this night ended up meaning to my wife and me. We hadn’t set out with any grand plans… just a way to enjoy the last few hours of what had been a remarkable two weeks in the Czech Republic. We headed up to the Letna Beer Garden with an idea to enjoy the view over the city and for me to spend the rest of our Czech currency on glasses of ice cold pilsner.

The beer garden was idyllic… in full bloom with the evening sun cutting through the trees and the expanse of Prague stretching out beneath our raised perch. I don’t think I would have chosen any other place on earth to be that night. The glasses of beer were going down really easy. At about the equivalent of $1 Canadian, it felt like they were paying me to crush a few pints.

My wife, not a beer drinker, elected for Coke, and by the look in her eye I should have recognized that she was up to something as those pilsners were loosening my mind…

We were watching someone’s dog run around among the tables looking for human snacks when the conversation drifted to the topic of whether we should finally get a dog of our own. Three pints into the evening, I was in that blissful state of being open to anything. On account of the beer, on account of being charmed by Prague and on account of being with my favourite person in the world, our conversation about a dog got more than serious. It became a fate that was being sealed five thousand kilometres away from home.

We agreed that when we got back home we would start looking to adopt a dog – preferably an older, quieter dog. The decision that night turned into adopting Chewy about six weeks later. I wrote about him here and the impact he ended up having on our lives. That story was seen by one of our favourite musicians, Hawksley Workman, who during his pandemic concerts in 2020, featured a song he wrote about Chewy that even referenced this night….

“It made us think back to the summer of 2013 / over beers in the Czech Republic / when we decided we’d need / an older quieter pup..”

As the sun set over Prague my wife and I had made a decision that easily ranks as one of the best we’ve made together (maybe only tied by our decision to adopt our current dog, Chloe, four years ago). Whenever I think about Chewy, I think about that night in Prague and a smile and glow always comes to my face. And I can’t think about Prague without thinking about Chewy. A beautiful combination of memories.