She's Sweet As...

...well, Honey! Seriously, this dog has the most mellow, easygoing personality I've ever seen. At least during the daytime. She's a (very loud) cryer at night, as she is very much into being with people at ALL times. Sorry pup, you've gotta get through the crate training first and then we will gladly put a doggy bed in our room.

Isn't she SO cute?!

She had her first vet visit today and the vet had nothing but praises for Honey's personality. We've gotten so many compliments on how calm and well behaved she is for a two month old. She's definitely not nearly as active as we anticipated, although I am expecting that to change as she gets through the frequent napping stage.

As the vet came in, she looked at Honey's papers from the Humane Society and said, "Border collie?? Where?! She looks like she's all lab!". We think so too, although after some research, we've noticed that some lab/border collie mixes just look like labs if the lab parent had fairly strong features, like English labs. We're interested to see how she develops as she gets older. Buster sure looked mostly chihuahua as a puppy, but now it's obvious that he's part pomeranian.

As we were snuggling with our two doggies on the couch last night, feeling pure bliss from the companionship, I had to laugh. What happened to me? Less than two years ago, on this very blog, I proclaimed that I was NOT a dog person. But now I must admit that I am loving this. Although I could do without the dog smell. I guess that's what carpet cleaners are for, right?

Honeydew

Honeydew. Dr Honeydew.

We'll call her Honey, although we have been calling her Honeydew this afternoon. She is a Lab/Border Collie mix and she is two months old. She was put up for adoption this morning and we got SO lucky. Story below the pictures.

We had gone out to the humane society yesterday to see if they had any puppies. We found one that we liked and put a 24 hour hold on him. That way, we had 24 hours to really make sure we were ready for another dog and that this was the one we wanted. By this morning, we were convinced we wanted another dog but I was having second thoughts about the one we'd picked. His mix of breeds was unknown and that was making me uneasy. While mutts are fine and healthier, I like to know what I'm getting into in a fair amount of detail. We decided to head over anyway and see the puppy again to make a decision.

It just so happened that eight lab mixes had been put up for adoption just before we got there and two were available to be seen (labs puppies go so fast and yes, six had already been claimed in under one hour). We saw both lab mixes along with the dog we'd put the hold on yesterday. A decision had to be made. While the puppy we'd met yesterday was SO cute, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to get a black lab like we'd wanted. While we were first on the list to adopt her (if we wanted), other people in line we allowed to visit with her while we made our decision. We decided that she was the dog for us, which meant I ended up taking the lab away from an older couple who wanted to adopt her. I felt kind of bad.

All in all, the whole process took two hours, at the end of which Aiden was having a grand meltdown because he was tired of having to wait so often (we'd go through a step, and then wait 15 minutes, another step, wait 20 minutes, etc). We stopped by John's work to show off the dog (I can't believe I did all this without him, although he had phone contact throughout it all) and then headed home with our new family member.

She has the most amazing personality! She's so sweet and playful, she loves Buster, and we've already had success with potty-ing in the correct spots. Buster seems a tad confused by this whole thing, but is running around with her and appears to really enjoy finally having a playmate. I'm sure it will take some adjusting back into the training a puppy mindset, but we are so happy that we found a lab puppy! If anyone feels like visiting the new puppy, please feel free!

Dog Adventures

We've had Buster now for a year and a half and we've pretty much fully turned into dog people. We LOVE our Buster! He gets pretty excited around other people, but with us he's Mr Snuggle Pants. Buster is also a very social creature. He loves other dogs, even though he does begin his introduction to them with a barking alert. Every time he's boarded at the vet, they comment on how friendly he is with the other dogs and how he always makes a new doggie friend when he's there.

A few months after we'd gotten Buster, Aiden started suggesting that we get another dog. We said no. We could not imagine owning more than one dog. Fast forward a year later and we have noticed that Buster tends to sulk if we're all busy. Like I said, he's very social. So we started talking about potentially getting Buster a friend. We had gotten comfortable with the dog, but there were other things that needed to happen. Transitioning the cats outside, simplifying our home life with less stuff and better organization, etc. We finally set a possible date to start seriously looking for another dog (we've been halfheartedly looking for a few months, just to get a feel for what's usually in the shelters). We'd start looking this summer.

Yesterday, I heard from a friend that a friend of hers was looking for an immediate new home for a 7 month old female lab. She was free. She had some past abuse and could get a little nervous at times, but in general was able to handle kids and dogs fine. We arranged for the dog to be brought over to our home yesterday evening to see if it was a good fit. She was definitely nervous about being in a new house, but was soon exploring and was fine with the boys. And then it was time to see if she could handle Buster. She couldn't. You see, while Buster loves other dogs, he's not great with boundaries. He got too close to her too fast and she did not like it. She sat on him (we laugh as we think about it, although I know Buster wasn't too pleased). We tried a few more times over 20-30 minutes, but it just wasn't working. We had to decline adopting her and it really sucked. I think both John and I were a little surprised at how disappointed we were.

If anything, the attempt made us realize that we really do want another dog for our family. We had a long discussion over dinner regarding compatibility with our kids and Buster and what we want in a dog. We'll keep looking. We may have a try a few times like we did tonight, but I'm sure we'll find a dog who needs us.

Ants

There is an ant nest somewhere around the front of our house. We've had some ant problems inside, but nothing too bad. But they are everywhere outside and it's fairly annoying. So I placed a few ant poison traps in various places outside in the hope that it would decrease the ant population. This isn't something that I gave too much thought to - I just wanted the ants gone.

Then Aiden saw the traps. Sensitive, bug loving Aiden. He asked me what they were and I told him. He got SO upset! Hysterical sobbing, tears streaming down his face, proclamations of love for bugs everywhere, teenage girl type wailing. He shut himself up in his room for a full two hours, crying off and on. He finally emerged with a letter to me, requesting that I remove the traps and leave the ants alive.

This wasn't going to be easy. We really need to reduce the number of ants out there, but I also understand that I have a very sensitive child. I promised him that I would remove the traps from the dirt area. I said nothing about the hidden traps that he hadn't seen. While I'm treading a fine line of lying to my child, I figure that if I remove the traps that were bothering him, he'll put at ease while we are still able to limit how many ants are crawling all over the property. It's probably hard for us adults to see any problem with killing off pests, but I know that Aiden still sees them as living things and the thought of killing them is upsetting to him. It sure made for an interesting afternoon in this house!