Sunday, March 20, 2011

puppy love

After months of missing our Zoe, we decided that it would be time to bring another dog into our lives. After weeks of scrolling through Petfinder.com and local rescue group websites, we fell in love with a litter of lab mix puppies.

Without telling the girls, we submitted an application to adopt and waited to hear from them. We had a phone interview and arranged to meet the pups in person last Saturday. We woke the girls very early since we had to drive 45 minutes away and were meeting the pups at 8:30 am. The girls thought we were going shopping to hit some "early bird specials".

The girls chatted away while Pat and I smirked the whole way there. We turned into the boarding facility and no one batted an eye. Pat told them that we had to visit one of my friends first. We drive down a long driveway to the kennel and pull up front. Megan actually reads the sign and says, "Kennel? Zoe's dead, why are we at a kennel?" Sarah finally realizes what is going on and gets all excited. Then, they see the puppies in the play yard. The girls go crazy. We calmed them down and told them that we were just visiting them and were not taking a puppy home!

We played with the pups and fell in love with them all. We set our sights on Max, but then come up with Rex and Marley as our backups. The next step in the process was a home visit and the rescue group began the long process of finding someone who could come out to the house. Meanwhile, I got an email telling us that Max has been spoken for. We were all crushed and began to rethink our second choice. Pat went back to the boarding facility and took a look at them all again. After learning from everyone involved with these puppies had Rex as their favorite, we decided to go with Rex.

Our home visit was yesterday morning and by 2pm, I received an email saying that we were approved. The rescue group was anxious to get him placed and drove him to our house at 8:30pm last night!

I was a busy evening, buying food, toys, a collar, etc. Once the puppy came home we had such a ball playing with him and trying to figure out a name. We narrowed it down to Crosby (for Syndey Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins), Brody, & Chance. Pat and I really wanted Crosby, but we couldn't get the girls to go with it. Megan really wanted Nick (since the puppies were born on Christmas Eve), but no one really wanted it but her. We went to sleep without a definite name for him.

The puppy slept pretty good, getting up only at 2am to go potty. He settled down pretty quickly too!

So this morning we decided on Chance Nicholas as the pups name. He is a sweet lovable boy who loves to snuggle and play. He's already figured out how to go up and down the stairs and has gotten his first bath. The girls are smitten, and so are we!



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