[Laughing]
I'm a mom now.
I'm so proud of you.
Good boy!
Wow, so proud of you!
You peed!
Sit.
Wait, that's not sit.
Sit.
Sit – oh!
[Laughing, clapping]
First bath!
Togi, come, come!
Sit.
Okay.
Ah, he's a biter.
He's teething and he's a chewer right now.
Hey guys!
So I wanted to do a video on my new puppy, Togi.
This is Togi.
As you can see, he's a little rascal.
Yeah, no, I thought I would be able to hold him
and him be all calm and cute for the video, but no it's okay.
Togi is a mini multi-gen goldendoodle.
And I do believe we were fated to be together.
It's been really tiring as a new dog mom.
He is my first official puppy that is my own.
So if you guys have followed me for a while,
you've noticed I've mentioned a dog, Coco.
Coco is actually Wilson's family dog,
but I was with him since they got her as a puppy,
so I felt like she was almost my dog,
except I didn't really raise her, feed her,
do any of that, but I played with her.
Togi is my first puppy of my own and I'm happy.
It's tiring and he's a handful,
but he's also super cute and really fun.
And all in all, I'm very grateful
and I feel very, very lucky to have found him.
Okay, so let me first talk about what I mean,
“we were meant to find each other”.
You know, I believe in the universe,
“everything happens for a reason”,
“whatever's meant to come to you will come to you”.
It was a very interesting chain of events, coincidences,
and synchronicities that led to this.
So it was in June where I started to get puppy fever,
because I saw other friends have puppies,
and there was one night where I dreamt that
my mom told my brother, “Oh, it's okay to get a puppy.”
My whole life, my mom, she never let us have a dog.
She just doesn't like animals, and I don't know.
She never allowed us to have dogs over at our house.
Even Coco wasn't allowed to come over.
That's how strict she was.
So anyway, there was this time where she's like, “Oh, it's okay now.”
And I woke up from that dream because my mom called me.
It was 11:11 AM when my mom called me.
Yes, I was still sleeping at 11:11 AM.
And she called me freaking out because she's like,
“Aileen, there's a cat in the house. I don't know how I got in.”
So I woke up, I went downstairs and yeah, there was a cat,
and it was a big cat in our house.
It was the strangest thing because we just didn't know how the cat got in.
It might've slipped in as Wilson was leaving to go to work,
I don't know, but it was strange.
I basically let the cat out.
I found a number on its collar and I called it.
And I mean, long story short, the cat basically was my neighbor's cat.
And the cat did find its way home.
But the day – I only spent, I don't know, five minutes with a cat,
and the cat was being so friendly, brushing up against me.
And so the day after the cat left, I missed the cat.
I was like, “I wonder how she's doing. I miss her.”
And so I called my neighbor again,
just to ask how the cat was doing.
And he's like, “Oh yeah, she's home. Everything's good.”
And it was that day, basically – Let me look at the date.
It was June 30th, the day I started missing the cat.
I was like, “Okay, I think I should get a dog.
It's the right time to get a dog.”
So that's the day I started looking up dogs for adoption.
And that's what set off my obsessive dog search,
from adoption to breeders to figuring out
what exact breed of dog I want and all the details of everything.
The chain of events is so interesting, right?
The cat came June 29th.
I missed the cat June 30th.
And I started looking for dogs June 30th.
So July 1st, the day after I started my search, Togi’s litter was born.
And then July 2nd was the day that I started reaching out to breeders,
because the 30th and the 1st,
I was only looking at dogs up for adoption.
And then after that, I was like, “Okay, it's hard to find a dog I want.
I have to expand my search.”
So on July 2nd, I emailed the breeder where Togi came from.
And she just happened to have a litter of 12 puppies, which has a lot of puppies.
And she had two extra puppies than expected,
and she only had, I think, nine people on her waiting list.
So there was a chance to get a puppy,
and I was super excited about that.
She wouldn't let me put a deposit on the puppy,
because she wanted to wait until they were seven weeks old
to see which one she would want to keep for herself.
So it was a lot of anxiety and uncertainty being like,
“Okay, there is this puppy that I might get.
I know I'm competing against a bunch of other people
for these extra two to three puppies.”
And I don't know if I'm going to get it until,
you know, the week before I could take it home.
So it was two months of waiting,
because she wouldn't let me put a deposit.
I was like, “Take my money, please.”
But she just wouldn't.
Anyway, fast forward through me searching and feeling anxious,
even putting a deposit on another puppy that I'm not getting anymore.
In that two-month span, the day came
where she opened up deposits for her extra puppies.
And it was actually on Wilson's birthday, August 15th,
where I was editing this video that I made
for Wilson's birthday, with my email open.
And when the email came –
I think I saw it like 10 minutes after the email came
and I submitted my money ASAP.
And I was worried because I submitted my deposit 11 minutes after she emailed me,
thinking that I wouldn't have gotten it in time.
But it turns out I was the first person to submit a deposit that day.
So I got to choose and I ended up choosing this little rascal
and I don't regret it at all,
because he's basically exactly what I want in terms of size.
He will be 25 pounds.
What's funny is, I actually looked up the astrology of these puppies.
When I found out when they were born,
I asked the breeder, “Okay, do you know what time they were born?”
And she gave me a time range,
and it turns out that Togi is a Cancer sun, Scorpio moon.
I obviously don't know his rising,
because we don't know exactly the time he was born.
But all in all, it really shows.
He is a Cancer puppy.
He is sensitive, emotional.
He can be dramatic.
I think that's the Scorpio moon.
He was kind of a cry baby the first week.
I mean, he still kind of is.
But we're training him to be by himself.
He would just – he has separation anxiety.
I mean, I think all puppies do.
They're not used to being by themselves,
so they'll just cry and bark.
But I think that I was meant to have a sensitive puppy.
If you guys know astrology,
my Chiron is in Cancer and those are my wounds.
And so growing up, those were the traumas and wounds that I dealt with.
And the fact that he is a cancer puppy –
he's teaching me so many lessons about motherhood,
about accepting sensitive, emotional children
and giving them love, and being like,
“Okay, maybe I was the cry baby when I was a kid,
and I must have been really annoying."
And as the parent, no matter what you can do,
you can never make your sensitive child happy,
because everything's going to make them sensitive and cry.
I don’t know, I think he's definitely here to teach me some lessons.
And you know, I see everything as a learning lesson.
Some of you out there might think I sound crazy.
I mean, "it's just a dog", but really, I'm learning so much.
It's only been a week and a half since I got him,
and I wanted to make this video now
because he's growing every single day.
He's already bigger than when I got him last week.
And I've been taking a lot of pictures, a lot of videos,
it's been really hard to be productive,
because with a puppy, you have to take them out
every 30 minutes, every hour, feed them, play with them, nap.
The only time I have a chance to work is when
he naps for like one or two hours at a time.
I'm not mad about it though, obviously.
Obviously, I wanted this and I'm happy
and I feel like it's like my next chapter in my life,
is to learn to be a dog mom.
I'm also learning how I would be as a mom,
how Wilson would be as a dad.
We're still not 100% sure we would want kids.
And I've never been the type of person that really, really wants kids.
I never really, really wanted a puppy either, until this year.
I just, all of a sudden, had this urge
and Wilson says that it was my motherly instincts kicking in,
but I don't know.
After this, I can only imagine how much more difficult it is
to have a human baby and to raise a human child,
because they stay children for much longer than puppies do.
I'm just learning about my tendencies.
I'm a worrisome parent.
I'm very protective and anxious,
and I need to learn to let go.
And it's funny.
You know, when you're young,
you just want your parents to let you go
and not be so protective and not be so…whatever, right?
But when you put yourself in those shoes,
you realize that you have similar qualities
as what your parents were like when they were young,
because you're getting to that age.
So it's just these lessons,
like life cycles and things like that.
Lately, I'm so involved in this personal life and dog mom life
that I'm on social media a lot less.
I'm reading Twitter a lot less.
I realized how toxic Twitter can be, how biased and toxic it can be.
And I do feel mentally healthier, just focusing on my life,
and I'm working less for now.
Obviously, I have a lot of work ramping up,
since we're launching the new 2021 workbook soon.
So I still have my work cut out for me.
But for now, I'm enjoying this puppy time,
taking lots of photos and videos.
And I'm just happy to make this video
so I could show you a little snippet of Togi
as he's young and growing up.
If you haven't already, he has an Instagram,
so you can follow it if you want.
It's @totallytogi.
And the name Togi is inspired by Togepi,
because earlier this pandemic, I was playing Pokemon.
I played Pokemon Sword and the older one, I forgot which one – Pearl, I think.
And so when I used Togepi, he evolves into Togekiss at the end,
and he was one of my favorite Pokemon.
And I nicknamed that Pokemon “Togi”.
And then when I found out about Togi’s litter of puppies,
I literally stayed up at night in the beginning,
just thinking about names and I don't know,
Togi just sounded the best to me.
The other options were “Zuko”, because I was watching Avatar.
Or “Waffles”, but there's a lot of goldendoodles named “Waffles”.
And I'm the kind of person that I want to have a unique name, invent my own name.
I mean that's why invented the word “Lavendaire”.
I don't know, if you guys have any questions or content you might want to see,
comment down below with what you want to see with Togi.
Obviously, my channel is about personal growth and lifestyle design.
I'm not going to be a dog channel at all.
I'm trying – he's in my life, but he doesn't need to be on screen,
just like Wilson and people in my life are.
I tend to like to keep some sort of boundary and separation
between my personal life and my online life,
because it's just better for my mental health.
I like having that boundary because I think it's healthy.
Obviously, I'm learning a lot of lessons from dog motherhood.
I don't know, I think he was the puppy that was meant to find me.
The way I interpret the whole cat story is,
the cat was a messenger telling me to look for a dog, because Togi was coming.
So the cat came to my house June 29th,
and then two days later, Togi was born.
And it was the day after that I found his breeder and reached out to her.
And I think because I reached out to her right after the puppies were born,
she was like, “Oh yeah, there's no one.
These are extra puppies. They're available.”
And so I was … that made me much more hopeful that I would get them.
I think that's it for today.
It's not a crazy long video or anything, just a little vlog of my life.
Sending you all so much love.
Hope you're staying sane.
Hope you're staying healthy and taking care of yourself during this year.
2020 is a year, man.
And even this week, California has wildfires.
Outside is orange.
It's literally smokey and orange where I live.
It's kind of sad.
This morning, I mean all day,
going outside where it's raining ash,
because of all the fires around.
So if you're on the West coast, stay safe.
All right, that's it.
Sending you so much love.
Bye!
Okay, say bye.
Say bye to your friends.
Bye!
Ow!
Okay, bye guys.
Good boy, good boy.
Oh, now he's calm.
Now you're calm.
What happened?
You're all pooed out?