Puppies!

Life seems to be moving in fast-forward, these days. Every chance I get to make a new entry here, there has been some major development in my little corner of the world to share with the three of you who will see this.

Without further ado: We got puppies! You read that right, plural.

About a month and a half ago, Ashley finally talked me into getting a puppy. After about seven years of nagging and hounding me, I finally gave in. I had secretly been warming up to the idea over the couple of months prior, but I didn’t want to tell her because I knew then she would become so relentless that I would probably change my mind.

We saw a picture of a beautiful Black Labrador puppy in a Craigslist ad, and I was hooked. Ashley contacted the owner, and after about four hours in the car driving to Wisconsin, we were the proud new “parents” of our first puppy.

Our first puppy, Lola, the day after we brought her home.

We decided on the name “Lola” pretty quickly, mostly because of the song. You know which one I’m talking about: Lola, La-La-La-La-Lola! Anyways, she was nine weeks old when we got her, and she’s 15 weeks old today. She’s been a blast!

Since we’re both gluttons for punishment, we decided to go out and get a second puppy. Lola was starting to get too big to play with my parents’ dogs, and we rationalized that while it will be more work, we were probably going to get another dog eventually anyway, so at least this way we can get through the puppy phase all at once.

This second puppy was extremely hard to find. We scoured Craigslist, the classifieds, Petfinder, our local shelter, and just couldn’t find a Labrador puppy. Finally, we started looking at ads placed in surrounding states and found this little guy, Baxter:

Our second puppy, Baxter!

We found Baxter in Missouri about five hours away from where we live. While it was quite a drive, he was perfect for what we wanted. He’s a Chocolate Labrador, which was our preference, and he is about 10 days older than Lola. Being as Lola was 12 weeks old at this point, we were really surprised to find a puppy her age available. It was hard enough to find a Lab puppy, let alone one that survived this long without being taken!

Both of our puppies just a couple days ago.

As you can tell from the above photo, they’re both supposed to be Labradors but they’re clearly not the same kind of dog. As it turns out, Lola is a mix between a Black Lab and some other dog. We could not get the person who sold her to us to respond to our phone calls, but we believe she is mixed with a dog called a Flat-Coated Retriever. Essentially, they look like Golden Retrievers as adults except they are black. We actually ordered a DNA test for her to find out exactly what mix she is, and we’re currently awaiting the results. While that seems over-the-top, it was only $70 and it will help us understand her behaviors and how best to train her.

Other than that, I don’t really have a lot of news. Like I said at the beginning, life is moving in fast-forward right now. It’s busy, but it’s also exciting. I’m looking forward for Autumn to hit us in full-force! I’ve already started turning on my fireplace in the mornings before work to take the chill out of the air and give me a warm spot to sit and drink my coffee. Sometimes it’s the little things…