Brand New Puppy

Yesterday I woke-up, drank some coffee because it gets my mind going, and then started working on my résumé and a few cover letters to apply for some careers at some amazing firms. Never did I expect what was going to happen, for I just kept sipping my coffee, acting like I was listening to my Mom's stories, and writing cover letters.

Then I got a text from Jodi, she is going to be in Littleton because she has a doctors appointment up here. 'That's cool,' I thought to myself while replying that she should come over for some coffee. She finally gets her a few hours later. We sit down after some small talk and the coffee finishes brewing, and then she finally gets her computer out. At that moment, my Mom decides it is time to go puppy and kitty hunting again, so she starts searching all sorts of websites. Within a matter of seconds, I'm doing the same thing and not too long after so is Jodi. So we're all looking at kittens and puppies, all of us distracted, and we keep finding these real catches. I applied at two places for adoption, one having white American Shepherds and one with a white Husky mix. After I hit submit, suddenly Jodi says she's found something incredible.

My mom comes up and looks first at what Jodi's found, there's excitement, so then I take a look at this beautiful puppies all up on this website. They are gorgeous and all of them just a little under two months old. Next thing I know, my Dad is home and he's not exactly excited about a new puppy. It does not really matter, because in no time the rest of us are in the car driving about an hour out to a small ranch home east of Aurora (that's right, just east of where the shooting happened). We get there and are instantly greeted by the woman that owns the place. [I'll Update Once I get a Link]

This is the Puppy we Took Home!

All The Puppies
So we get there and we are immediately greeted by nine of the eleven puppies that were in this litter. All of them are playful, all of them loving, and we have to pick out just one to take home. Now, from the get go my Mom really wanted an Aussie pup that was a blue merle, blue-eyed little girl with a tail. To explain, not all the dogs were blue merles, not all of them had blue-eyes, and most of them were stub-tailed (which is natural with shepherds at border collie work dogs), and even more of then were boys. There was exactly one in the litter, and my Mom found it and stole it and played with that girl for the first half an hour. I think it was at that point that my Mom knew she wanted that dog and we would be taking her home!

Just for clarification, she's a blue merle, blue-eyed, full tailed Australian Shepherd and Border Collie mix girl. In other words, a beautiful dog!


After that, it was a matter of figuring out if we wanted another puppy or not. And the breeder could see that we were truly the type of dog owners you want to sell dogs to, because we played with them like they were already our own! So she sat out there with us, egging us to get another one at a discounted price (she was going to take fifty dollars off for getting a pair), and we spent forever looking at all the dogs. One dog was black and white with brown-eyes, Blackster as the breeders kids called him, and he loved sitting in my lap. I just wanted to note Blackster because he loved me and would shove other dogs out of my lap for just my attention. He wasn't really in the running, but I thought that was funny. Anyway, Another one was a red merle with blue-eyes, beautiful baby-boy-blues that stood out from his tan and white coat. And finally, there was what my Mom would later describe as the perfect bookend puppy to go along with the first girl. He was another blue-merle and blue-eyed pup with a stubbed-tail, but he really did match his sister.

The Two Males Sniffing	They Looked-Up at Me	Crawling Across the Wooden Log

The rest of the puppies and the mommy Australian Shepherd were taken away, leaving us with the girl and the two boys. We played a bit inside, letting them eat a little bit while we got out of some wind, and then all of us went back outside for a second round in the grassy backyard.

The Red Merle was Brave enough to Sniff at the Goats

So we sat around, playing with the three remaining puppies when suddenly the little girl got tired and she just closed eyes and fell asleep in my Mom's hands. My Mom hands her to me after a few minutes, I barely got time to hold her because she was going crazy back to her mother when we had all the puppies out, and she picked up another one. It too fell asleep in her hands, so she handed that one to Jodi and picked up the final one. That last puppy also fell dead-asleep in her hands. I don't know what my Mom did, but all the puppies were suddenly sleeping. We let them rest, petting them and just enjoying them while we spoke with the breeder. There's even a picture of me holding all three sleeping pups in my lap, such cute dogs!

The Blue Merle Stood Back, Watching

After a quick wake-up by walking them around and getting them going, we took them out of the backyard to keep them off the soft, comfortable grass. They started running all around the rocky front, which is where these pictures were taken. Now, the goats were in a fenced off pen pretty close by and they came right over. Naturally, our little explorer boy puppies went over and wanted to see what was happening, each going up to the fence before jumping back. The little girl did not seem too interested, staying around one of our feet and just watching. I took a bunch of picture of the two boy puppies at this point, watching them play with the goats and each-other as they started exploring the unknown that was close to home. It was very cute, and we loved both of those dogs.

In the end, and although we really wanted to take more than one, we only took home the little girl puppy. She cried and cried in the car, we kept her in our laps as she came home with us, and we had to stop to get food. At this point the sun had basically set and none of us had chowed down like those puppies had, so we stopped quickly at a gas station McDonalds. I held onto the little girl while my Mom and Jodi ran in to wash-up and get some food. The whole time we were in the car, she was whining and crying and begging me to let her go back, it was truly heart breaking. But I know that in the coming days she'll grow really attached to us, it's just going to be hard getting that far.

In Her New Home
So we get her home and the first thing we do is get her into the backyard. After such a long car ride (which thankfully she fell asleep once we hit the highway), we knew she'd need the bathroom. We also brought her some water and food to chow down on (the same food the breeder had been giving the dogs, which is important if you do not want upset tummies). And then it was back to playing and exploring.

About an hour or so after she had first arrived, explored the porch and a small area of grass out back, she was back to crying as she solved that her mom and her brothers and sisters were not there with her. Again, heartbreaking to see such a small pup cry and walk all over as she sniffs and tries to find her family. Still, we played with her some more, really working out all of the energy she had.

Finally Asleep (Partially on the Dog Bed)

Bringing her inside, which while we were playing with her my Dad had been vacuuming and preparing for the new puppy (we did not want our last dog to really be anywhere, so he really cleaned-up the place). She started walking around, looking around, exploring, and even crying a little bit. Then she got tired and we put her down in the dog bed that we already had. She did not like that at first (because it is kind of lumpy and it is not very easy to make comfortable. So she scratched at it and tried everything, but all to no avail since the dog bed just would not budge. Oh well, she seems to really enjoy sleeping on the carpet when the bed does not work out.

So then my Mom and I started working on the next important thing, naming her. Now, we both agreed that we needed to agree, and nothing would be final until everyone else in the family (including my little brother) had a say. I'm not exactly sure why, because this is clearly my animal of the family pets. Seriously, I'll be the one taking her for walks and I'm already the one staying up late with her on her first night home. At any rate, my Mom and I started really reading through lists of names and just searching for the proper one. So far, after about 200 names, we've got nothing we really think fits. Oh well, I see another blog about the dog's name coming up next. Then my Mom decided to call it a night.

About half an hour after my Mom goes to bed, the puppy is back up and prowling around. This time she's up for a solid two hours, which is stressful because I really did not know what to do with a puppy except play with her. So I took her out back and jumped around with her or watched her carefully as she started exploring. Then I would take her back in and she would cry a bit before eating some food and drinking more water (not to mention peeing a few times on the carpet... I cleaned that up after getting her outside and watching her play and then getting her back in). It was all fine, I just did not know what to do because she has so much more energy for two hours than I have. However, I finally found something she loved and I could keep her playing without too much effort.

A Soccer Ball!

Anyway, that's all for right now, but I'm sure I'll have more puppy posts coming tomorrow!