Since We Have Nothing Better To Do...

and there is something completely wrong with us, we decided to get a puppy. You see E's parents never got him a dog which he has always wanted. He had been talking more and more about it over the past few years and I was able to successfully hold him off. But now, he has enlisted the help of two little girls to help plead his case. e has been asking since Monterey when we were going to get a dog. She actually decided that it would be OK for Buddy to die so that she could get a dog. KK even would ask, 'can me get a dog Mama?'. And now, we actually have a yard... I didn't stand a chance.

Meet Isis... a not so puppy puppy.

We had been looking everywhere over the past few days and just couldn't figure out how to find a darn dog. All of the breeders we found were hours away and we didn't really want to go to a shelter and get an animal with lots of baggage. We finally looked up the classifieds in the Washington Post and happened to find lots of ads for lab puppies and actually found a lady in our area... just 20 minutes away. She told us that she had 2 female yellow lab puppies that were 12 weeks old. The price was right and we headed out to look... cash in hand.

We pulled up to this beautiful house with horses and dogs... a hobby farm, I guess. It seemed like the perfect place. As soon as we pulled up, we saw the dogs in the 'play yard'... 2 English Bulldogs and 1 yellow lab. Bonnie descended from the porch to greet us, enrobed in soiled barn attire and front tooth protruding ever so nicely. She told us that we got there too quick... she was able to get one of the dogs in the house, but the other was still in the yard. We headed over to meet her. Dog #1 was extremely friendly and excited to see us. She was big, but cute. Bonnie told us that she was going to be 100 lbs. After playing, we headed in to see dog #2. We were warned that she was a little shy and would need to warm up a little bit. Shy might have been an understatement... the dog wouldn't even look at us. She sat there while we petted her and e fell in love with her. She wanted to get her 'because she was sad'. That's our girl... she's going to save the world some day. We somehow convinced her to head outside and take another look at the other dog... we were concerned that a 'nervous' dog would not do well with KK (those that know her will understand that decision). When we stopped petting dog #2, she got up and we noticed that she had soiled herself. Yep, good idea to go look at the other dog.

We decided that she was the one. I paid Bonnie our money, signed some sort of document that said she wasn't responsible for anything... including Parvo (see she was selling the dogs for a friend who was in the process of moving), and we were on our way. After further inspection of the document and the dog, we decided that we should call a vet since we had 48 hours to determine whether or not the dog had a life threatening genetic disorder in order to receive our money back. The people that we are renting from happened to leave all sorts of magnets on the fridge for us, one of which was a number for a wonderful vet. The news we received wasn't so wonderful. Instead of being 12 weeks old, our puppy is actually 4 1/2 months old. Although she was supposedly de-wormed a total of 4 times, she was riddled with round worms. She has juvenile cataracts in her right eye, probably due to blunt force trauma, and will probably lose vision in that eye... unless, of course, we opt to bring her to a doggie ophthalmologist. She also has a severe overbite and we have to keep an eye on the bottom teeth when they come in so that they don't puncture the roof of her mouth. If they don't correct themselves, then capping the teeth is an option.

Did I mention that she smelled? I don't think that she had ever had a bath and had spent her whole life outside in a play yard.

We have made great strides in potty training and stair walking... apparently she had never seen a set of stairs... ever.

With all that though, she is a great dog. We are happy to have her. We feel like we did the right thing... a really expensive pet rescue... and she is so happy to be here.