Dennis Prager, one of the most influential men in my life, spoke on his talk show recently about the impact of a first year of marriage. He asked if an easy, successful first year or a difficult, hard first year were indicative of the long-term success of the marriage? He didn’t take a position either way, allowing callers to offer their stories, which were both positive and negative about the impact of their first years on their marriages.
As I’m about to survive, I mean celebrate, my first year of my second marriage, it raised some questions for me, worthy of thought. Our first year has been both wonderful and rough, in many unforeseen ways, and I’ve wondered what it means for our future. 
I’m just a man and his dogs and it all started when I was a child. My mother brought home a little dog that was so small that she carried it in her purse. The dog was a mixed-breed of Pekinese, Pomeranian, and Chihuahua and my mother named it Su-Su. Fully grown, she weighed maybe 7 pounds. Su-Su was cute, adorable, and annoying, but I loved her. However, I always wanted a bigger dog. Like Lassie or Rin Tin Tin. Little dogs belong to girls or Paris Hilton, not to men. 