Dog Daze

Well, the Tamagotchis and the Nintendogs didn't work! I've been trying to prevent this day from happening. But it's hard to be the kind of dad who refuses to let his three boys get a dog. I do have a good excuse to not want a dog. Our first dog was a disaster! I was trying to stall until they really wanted one and really worked me to get one. The "asking" really started this last month. As the 8yo put it, "If I hadn't whined at you so much, then we wouldn't have gotten a dog. So sometimes good things come from whining." Whatever.

We went to the dog adoption day last Sat. at the PetSmart. We wanted to adopt to get an adult dog to avoid all the puppy issues (potty training, crying a night, chewing, etc.). But of course, they had a couple of really cute black lab puppies. Some background: my sister has a really sweet black lab. So we went for it.





They had to do the surgery to infertilize her, so we had to wait until this Thurs to get the dog. It was all the boys could think about: How many more days for the dog; When are we going to get the dog; Why can't we have the dog now? Every prayer included the line, "thank you that we can get a puppy!"
Then they called on Thursday- the clinic wasn't open so we had to wait until Friday. Uh oh. It was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth. We went out and picked her up Fri. at lunch. She was really woozy and vomitous from her anesthesia. So we took her home and put her to bed in her kennel.






















Here are my observations after 24 hours of dog. She is very sweet. She knows how to scratch at the door if she needs to go (she's only had a couple of accidents). She slept through most of last night. She seems to like us. It's going OK. There was a problem agreeing on a name. The final compromise is Maddie.

She's at my feet right now chasing her tail. I guess having a dog isn't so bad.