Our Soon to be New Addition

No, we're not adopting a third child, although this does tend to happen overnight without warning.  But, after a couple months of discussion, pros and cons, more discussion, budgeting, researching, more researching and long talks with the littles, we have decided to move forward with adding a canine friend to our family. Whew....deep breaths.  Tim and I have never owned a dog, in childhood or together.  The closest we've come is hamsters.  And our children.  I honestly can't tell you what happened in my brain and heart, but a switch went off and I went from being a human who is easily annoyed by 4 legged creatures to a woman who oohs and aahs at every passing dog.  Cats, no.  Still detest the felines (sorry for all my cat loving friends).  I'm okay with them licking me, jumping a big...again, I have no idea what happened.  It's mind boggling to my poor husband and my closest girlfriends.

SO...we've been researching non-shedding breeds since I'm quite anal about the cleanliness of my home and my black articles of clothing.  After convincing myself of my undying passion for 2 different breeds, a co-worker of Tim's sent a photo of a friend's Goldendoodle (mix of poodle and golden retriever).  I fell in love within about 4 minutes and started researching the crap out of breeders around the country.  To my dismay, the average price for one of these highly sought after, intelligent, non-shedding and very family friendly dogs is $1800-$2500.  That wasn't happening (mostly because I quit my job a while back).  Just a small factor. Tim told me if we could find a doodle for under $1K we would talk more seriously.  And so, on Saturday at 11:53pm, while Tim was losing money at poker, I did just that.  I found an obsolete breeder in the back woods of Minnesota who has a litter of mini Goldendoodle puppies she hasn't been able to sell during their nightmare winter and has two remaining, a boy and a girl.  They're 4 months old, about 18 pounds, curly coats, non-shedding and ready to leave the farm and find a home.  Oh yeah, she's selling them at half price to get rid of the litter so she can focus on her other litter about to arrive.  Bingo.  I spoke with her the next morning, got the skinny and started sweet talking my man.  It worked friends.  He's on board.  Nervous, but on board.

We chose the boy, who is a beautiful red shade, exactly what we wanted.  He won't get past about 30 pounds, which is perfect.  Because of that, Dude has chosen the name "Medium" for the dog.  Or "Cool Dude."  Or "Jumpy."  He's really not giving us much to work with.  "Steve" has been his best offer thus far. And I don't think we'll go with Squirt's addition of "Lucy" since that's Cara and Wes's puppies' name.  We have a list of names but are waiting to meet him (hopefully on Sunday via American Airlines).  Today, Squirt and I filled a cart at Homegoods with doggie supplies and Tim's currently at our neighbor's buying their crate. We also have a trainer coming on Thursday night to work with our entire family in arrival of the little fur ball. And we'll start with two private sessions with him.  We're on it, as much as we can be.

Say a little (ok, a gigantic) prayer for we make it through the next 8 months of getting into a solid rhythm in one piece.  Dude is over-excited and gets a bit spastic around dogs, Squirt hides on the nearest couch and Tim and I don't have a clue what we're doing.  Why not go for it, right?  Makes nothing but sense.