Unsolicited Endorsement: Corgis

Your dog is cute, I guess. But it’s not a corgi.

There are many adorable small animals in the world. Mini-lop bunnies, for instance, with their droopy ears and wiggling little noses. But nothing beats a li’l corgi pup.

The big ears, the short legs, the little rump, and best of all, that gigantic smile — I just can’t handle it. It’s their cuteness more than the practicality that attracts me to them, but corgis are superior for more than just their looks. Corgis are the perfect size to avoid the annoying yappy dog category, the kind that look more like oversized rodents than dogs, and small enough that they can’t jump up on the counter and eat your food.

But back to the looks — search Instagram for corgis and you’ll see what I mean. You could start with some of my favorites, including Winston-Salem’s own Charlie the Corgi. And there’s Nugget, Noodle and Huey. Just the other day I started following @taleoftwocorgis, which features two little goobers — siblings, actually — one with brown markings and the other black.

There’s a rule in our household: no tagging me in corgi videos. I can handle the photos, kind of, but when it comes to adorable videos of these pups trying to climb stairs, or smiling uncontrollably or a litter of corgi pups tumbling over each other, I just can’t even.

I desperately want a corgi, or really two. And all my friends know it well. I’m resting my head on a large, plush stuffed animal corgi as I write this, and I have a daily corgi calendar. But I’m too damn practical to break down and adopt one, recognizing that I need to wait until a more stable station in life when I can commit to taking care of one.

I’ve never had a dog — my mom rightly insisted she’d end up being the one to care for it — and I didn’t even do very well taking care of our family’s pet bunny as a kid. I lost it when a good friend added an adorable corgi pup named Piper to her life, but when she told me that she needed to go home daily during lunch and talked about the complications with traveling or nights out in a different Triad city, I knew my dream would need to wait.

Until then, there’s Instagram and playdates with my friend’s dog. But in my heart, I know corgis are worth the wait.