Raising Young Ones: A sad goodbye leading to a happy new beginning....

If you read our multitudes from yesterday, you would have noticed that we had one less body in our house this week. Our 1-1/2 year old labradoodle, BJ, had to be put to sleep due to complications from aspiration pnuemonia caused by megasophagus. It was very sad and hard for all of us - tears were shed from all but Pookey. But, we were thankful that this was a life lesson that God allowed, in that we were learning about death through a pet rather than a person.

BJ, and Bingo before him, were our big teddy bear dogs, who served our families as guard-dogs. And, knowing that we have a need for that still, but no dog, leads us to our new addition to our family today. First, I wanted to share that Melody won a book from our library's summer reading program a couple weeks ago and her book was about a dog named "Goldie". She fell in love with it even before she started reading because of a cute blonde puppy on the cover. Little did we know when she got this book, we would be shopping for puppies in just a matter of a couple weeks.

Since our last 2 labradoodles were black and male, we thought we would change things up a bit with our next dog and try to get a blonde female. Of course, we go right to the local ads... By golly, there were several different ads for labradoodle pups. In making phone calls, were blessed enough to find a breeder that even had some blonde females available, just like we were hoping for! Praise God!!! I made that inquiry phone yesterday and we picked up our sweet, little (not for long!) beauty this afternoon. We know it'll take lots (did I say LOTS?!!) of work to train this little girl and get her ready for her duty to be on guard for our Young bunch, but it is SO worth it! Here are pictures of Goldie's first day home from our first meeting 'til right up to bedtime....