In the Beginning...

I guess the best place to start is from the very beginning. For us, it had started in early 1995. We were on the lookout for a puppy to add to our family. We had moved into our home the year before and were finally becoming a little more comfortable with our new-found independence. We had both had dogs/animals separately when we were younger, but this was going to be different... this new puppy would be OUR puppy. And we had numerous discussions about whether we were ready to add to our home and if we would be able to handle being responsible for another living being in our care (but that's another story altogether).

We had made a number of trips to the SPCAs as well as the dog pounds and animal shelters in the Lower Mainland. We weren't sure what type of puppy we were looking for but we knew that we would know it when we saw her. Then one day - it happened! We were at the Vancouver SPCA when we saw her... a small little tan shepherd cross and her black brother (or at least that is what we believe). She was found out on the streets and had been brought into the SPCA to find a home for her. We knelt down to the cage that she was kept in and she got up from her little bed and sat down in front of us. Well, we just knew that this was the puppy for us. But, like so many things in life, things were not going to be that easy.

You see, because she was found on the streets, the SPCA had a waiting period (I guess to allow the owners to come claim their animals) so we weren't able to take her home that day. We were pretty crushed. We went scouting around again to local animal shelters but we just knew in our hearts that our new puppy would have to be that little tan shepherd cross.

That brings us to Wednesday, March 1st, 1995. The last day of RRSPs for the season. I mention that simply for the fact that it was a busy day for me (probably the busiest in the entire year). Because of that, I was scheduled to work extra long hours to help finish up all of the last minute contributions in the day. It was also the first day that the SPCA was going to allow adoptions for the little puppy. And we just knew that if we waited too long, somebody else would just snatch her up.

I had my plan in place - during my lunch hour, I drove down to the SPCA to adopt our new puppy. After a brief interview with the SPCA staff - and stretching the truth about our backyard fencing (which I'll talk about later), I was off with our new puppy. I hurriedly drove home with our little tan shepherd cross pup in a cardboard box that was given to me at the SPCA - one hand steering the wheel and the other trying to keep her from jumping out of the box. When we arrived at her new home, I put her in the kitchen and locked her in with a special gate that we had purchased just for her arrival. With not much time left in my lunch hour (actually, I was probably well past my lunch hour) I headed back to work and hoped that her new Mommy would take good care of her when she came home from work later that day. I'll let her Mommy talk more about her first day with our new puppy.

Knowing Daddy would be working late, I decided to leave work a little bit earlier than normal to make a quick stop at the supermarket. As we were not certain we would be able to get our tan little puppy at noon, we did not buy any doggy food beforehand, thus the last minute stop to pick up some Puppy Chow.

I finally made it home and flew open the front door. To my surprise, a cute little bundle of fur greeted me there. Hmmm, Daddy did not put her into the kitchen, I thought to myself as I bent over to pet her. We walked towards the kitchen and that's when I noticed that the gate was indeed in the hallway, but not in an upright position like it was supposed to be. It seems our new puppy has super puppy powers, or maybe the gate just wasn't puppy proof. I decided to take a quick look around for puppy damage. Sure enough, our sweet little puppy girl had left me some puppy deposits in the living room carpet. I quickly scooped that little mess up.

I then proceeded to dish out some Puppy Chow for our famished little puppy. She really liked her chow. While she was eating, I thought about the little poopy present and thought that it was time to give puppy her first bath, just in case she may have brought fleas home with her. Thinking back on it now, her first bath was probably the easiest bath we have ever given her. She looked miserable after her bath. She was all curled up in a little ball and looked up at me with sad little puppy eyes. I should have known that those puppy eyes would be our downfall as she got older. She would always look up at us with those sad puppy eyes whenever she knew she was in trouble. Who could get mad at a puppy with those eyes?

At this time, we were keeping our little puppy in the kitchen because she wasn't house trained yet. We had placed her in the kitchen that night and reattached the gate, hoping it woud be strong enough to contain our little super puppy. I remember waking up the next morning and finding that our little pup had escaped and chewed through a bunch of telephone/answering machine wires. We were so worried that she might have hurt herself by chewing through power cords or eating something poisonous that we began doubting whether we were really ready to take on the responsibilities of having a puppy. But our puppy was just too cute that we couldn't possibly let her go.

As puppy parents, we had many things to learn about raising a little puppy girl. There was the time that we tried to teach our little puppy not to bark. I can't recall who told us to try this, but one of the methods that we tried was to put a bunch of pennies in a pop can and then shake it at her when she barked. I guess the theory was that she wouldn't like the sound of the pennies rattling in the can and would learn not to bark. That turned out to be a dud... in fact, I think she wound up barking more when she heard the pennies rattling. As it turned out, as our little puppy grew up, she usually only barked if she had a reason to bark. If the water dish was empty, she'd give us a look and go "Woof!". If we didn't come right away, she would keep going "Woof!" until we got the message that it was time to refill the water dish. It wasn't even that she was thirsty - she just knew that the bowl was empty and it was her duty to let us know. When she had to go out to the backyard, she would also give us a quick look and go "Woof!" then walk to the kitchen door. If we didn't come right away, she would come back and stick her head towards the living room and go "Woof!" again like she was saying "well, I'm waiting... come on!".

Our little puppy went through a long teething period which included many pieces of chewed furniture. From kitchen cabinets to nightstands, our little puppy girl managed to find a way to chew through pretty much anything. We wanted to make sure that she didn't chew up the drapes like she did when she was younger and one of her aunties suggested that we try rubbing some garlic on the bottom of the drapes because dogs didn't like the taste of garlic. Well, turns out that our little puppy actually did like the taste of garlic and that didn't work out exactly like we imagined. From that point on, we always knew to take her auntie's advice with a little grain of salt.

By the first time that we had taken our little girl to see Santa, she had grown up quite a bit (but she was still a puppy at heart.) We heard that Santa was visting all the good little puppies at the SPCA so we decided that we'd make sure our little puppy got to sit on Santa's lap so she could ask him for all the puppy biscuits and puppy toys that she wanted. As you can see, she barely fit on Santa's lap but one look at her huge smile and you can tell that she was really happy to be there... she even got to wear one of Santa's spare hats.

--- to be continued


Puppy Mishaps and Mischiefs

One day I had returned home during my lunch break and I was horrified to find our puppy sitting in our kitchen with her face and body wrapped up in our kitchen drapes! With the drapes still attached to the curtain rod, our little puppy had gotten twisted up and was unable to move a muscle. I quickly tried to untangle her, hoping that she had not choked herself. She had somehow managed to chew a hole through the drapes, stuck her head through, and got herself in such a knot that it took me several minutes before I could completely free her. Needless to say, we quickly made sure that we always kept our drapes at least puppy height away from the floor from that point on.

Since we're on the subject of kitchen mishaps... maybe we should talk about the strip of carpet that used to be in front of our sliding glass door. If you look really closely to the picture to the left, you can see the beige strip of carpet that's next to our puppy's big paws (and yes, we know... those are HUGE ears on our little puppy girl). Anyways, getting back to our story... it turns out that our puppy had her own ideas of how her new home should be decorated. Apparently, she didn't think that the carpet went well with the rest of the kitchen so she decided to rip it out (or as best as she could do with her small little puppy mouth). It took us many carpet tacks, nails, and extra carpet strips to try and repair the damage but our puppy was quite persistent and continued to rip it up on a number of other occassions. We finally managed to tack it down enough and that ended the carpet renos to the kitchen. At that point, I think that strip of carpet had more carpet tacks, nails, and glue per square inch than any other piece of carpet in the entire world - but truthfully, I think our puppy just changed her mind and decided that the carpet could stay.

Our little puppy girl grew quickly and had a habit for jumping up on counters (and people). One day, we were making cupcakes for Valentines Day and had left them to cool on the counter. We went to the other room to wait but after awhile, we started wondering where our little puppy had gotten to. To our horror, our little puppy had managed to jump up on her hind legs and gobbled down a bunch of the cupcakes. Being the smart little puppy that she was, she made sure to eat the cupcakes whole (liner included) to hide any evidence of her mischief.

On another occasion, our little puppy jumped up and burned one of her little puppy paws on the stove. Fortunately, it was just a brief contact and the stove wasn't on (we had just turned it off). But still, we worried immensely and had to quickly call the vet.

Oh, puppy... How do we love thee? Let us count the... times that you've run into our patio screen door? Well, now that we mention it... it was a number of times... well, more than a number of times. When we were lucky, our little puppy would just walk into the screen door and just bump her little nose on the screen and get startled. "What was that?" our little puppy girl would ask us with that quizzical look on her face. Then there were the times that she was running at full tilt out the kitchen door - the only problem? The screen door was still on :-( Fortunately, she's never hurt herself doing this. The worst times came when she saw something outside that she wanted (hint: it's furry and rhymes with "quirell"). She would just barrel down and run towards the garden. For some reason though, she never broke the screen... She's knocked the screen door off it's hinges many times though. We must have replaced the screen door at least 3 times before we gave up and just tried to re-bend the frame back into place.

--- to be continued


Puppy Walks and Adventures

It was a dark and stormy night... SUDDENLY, I noticed puppy was walking strangely. It was just after Halloween and puppy and I were taking a walk at night up to the park. Puppy had started to limp on her back leg and I wasn't sure why. When I lifted her paw, I saw what the problem was... she had somehow managed to get a carelessly discarded lollipop stuck to the bottom of her paw. I'm just glad that I found it... I could imagine frantically going to the vet only to find out it was just a piece of candy stuck to her paw.

We always knew that our little puppy was beautiful. I recall walking her to the park one day when she was a little pup and a car that had was just driving by slowed down and told us that she was the cutest little puppy they had ever seen.

We've met a lot of characters on our walks with our little puppy... Who could forget Biscuit Lady - a kindly elderly lady who walked through our area. Why did we call her Biscuit Lady? Well, you guessed it - she carried around little biscuits for all the little dogs that she met on her daily walk.

Then there was that strange man with a little white terrier. He could talk the ear off an elephant with his long, convoluted stories about... well, the only thing I remember is him talking about skunks in the area. We always kept an eye out to make sure we steered clear of him.

We always knew that there was something special about our puppy - but it was still amazing how quickly her super powers appeared. For example, on no less than two separate occassions, our little puppy managed to break free from her steel choke chain. I don't mean that she slipped out of the chain or that this was some flimsy little rope - these were extremely durable chains that she managed to just break with her special puppy powers. After the first one broke, we decided to get a thicker, stronger choke chain but that proved to be just as ineffective. Over the years, we've tried everything from halti head collars to full puppy body harnesses but our determined little puppy always managed to go wherever she wanted to go and pull us along for the ride.

Our little corn chip smelling puppy always liked to sniff things. Oh, and we didn't call her our little corn chip smelling puppy because she liked to smell corn chips... she used to smell like corn chips... mmm! Anyhoo, her favourite part of going out on walks was getting the chance to stiff all the trees and bushes along the walk to see if she recognized anyone that passed by earlier (and I do mean ALL of the trees and bushes!). When she found an especially smelly spot at the park, she would love to just throw herself onto her back and roll all over it. Her love of rolling in smelly stuff carried into our backyard as well. There was this one time that our little puppy was "helping us" rake the leaves... turns out she just wanted to roll around in the big pile of leaves.

--- to be continued


Friends

One of our puppy's first friends was a little Siberian Husky named Kilak. Kilak lived up near the park that we always took our little pup to. The two of them made fast friends and because our little puppy looked like she was part husky, they also made the cutest puppy couple ever! When they played together, it looked like they were in their own little world. Invariably, Kilak would always fall head over paws for our little puppy and she would fall down right next to him. Our little puppy was possessive even then and she would drape a paw over Kilak as they continued to play.

Our puppy met a number of friends at the park - each with their own distinct personalities:

There's Basil the beagle. We called him The Little General.

Basil is also the namesake of a little rhodesian ridgeback that we knew. Both Basils look so much alike that's it's a little hard to tell which one is which (they're beside Scarlett the german shepherd).

There's Betsy the airedale terrier. I've always though Betsy had such an interesting gait... she probably could have gotten a job as one of those Irish Step Dancers.

Here you can see Betsy chasing Lady Tyson, the boxer.

Some other shepherds that we've met at the park are Tess and Wolf. Tess tolerated but rarely played with the other dogs. But as you can see, our puppy managed to get Tess worked up this day. And Wolf was one of the most well-mannered shepherds that we've ever met.