Exciting News!

For my birthday in August, my wife gave me some great news. She said that I could finally get a dog. Because of where we lived and how soon we were moving, we decided to wait on the dog. Since then I've been looking for a dog on petfinder.com anyway.

Recently, since we've moved, I found the dog I want. For the last week or so we've been getting ready for her. Looking at all the stuff we need to get. Learning about training. Figuring out where she'll sleep. Talking about all the rules (No dogs on the furniture!). It's all really exciting to me. It's even exciting for my wife who, until recently, I thought didn't care much for pets.

Before you get to see her, I'm going to show you what I've been doing to get ready.

I've spent lots of time on petsmart.com because that's the closest chain pet store around. We support local stuff generally, but pet supplies are expensive! I wanted to get a bed for the dog since the house is all hardwood and tile downstairs. But those were expensive too! So I decided to make one.

Our friends Jill & Eric have a couple of dogs and they posted recently on their blog about creating their own dog bed. I had to do it... it would save at least 30 bucks. So I did. Two actually.

I used two old pillows and an old curtain. I sewed the pillows together and then basically made a big pillow sham so we can wash it easier. The other bed it just a large pillow stuffed with batting. I think we spent less than 5 bucks for both beds. Here are some pictures of the bed creating...

 

 

 

I had to test it out...

For my birthday my wife got a collar tag with the dog's name on it, a training book, a bowl, bone, etc. We also got a crate the other day and are waiting until Friday to go grab her food and some other stuff. 

You're less interested in the dog "stuff", though, than you are in the dog.

So here she is...

 

Her name is going to be Yahtzee when we get her. I have no idea what kind of dog she is, but I freakin love her tongue! She's about 40 pounds and just shy of 6 months old from what I know. She's a rescue. I don't know much about her history, but I do know that she was rescued about a month or two ago from this place down in South Carolina. They picked her out of a kill shelter just hours before she was to be euthanized. I'm glad that we're able to support a place like this because I admire what they're doing.

We're getting her from All For The Love Of Animals Pet Rescue. They get dogs out of high kill shelters and adopt them to people all over the country. Apparently the shelters down south do a lot of euthanizing because there is an overpopulation of dogs down there. They don't have spay and neuter laws like we do up north. This shelter spays or neuters the animals and then ships them to their new homes. There's a lengthy application and the woman who runs the place doesn't just give a dog to anyone. She'll use your application to see if there is a dog who would fit with you. After speaking with her, Yahtzee was definitely the dog for us. She told me that she's got a great personality, very easy going, not very needy, and calm. She sounds like the perfect dog to train for a therapy dog, which we would like to do.

My wife will soon be working in a geriatric rehab facility as a Physical Therapist. Once she's there and the dog is trained, we're hoping to get the dog in on weekends to do dog therapy with some of the patients. 

I'll keep you up to date on Yahtzee, because I'm super excited about getting her. She's supposed to be coming the first weekend in December. Early Christmas present for us!