Comfort

The howling/crying at night fiasco appears to be resolved.  Mama took one of her old t-shirts, sprayed it with some of her perfume and placed it in his crate with him at night.  Apparently having an object with a familiar smell close by helped comfort him.  I am just glad to be able to finally get some sleep now.

Waaaah!!! I miss my mommy

Yawn.  Yup the time of this post is correct folks.  It is night three with Tornado (yes, we still have not decided on a name but it is getting close) and it is 3:30 am and be glad you cannot hear the sound coming from downstairs.  Tornado is howling/crying up a storm down there.  Mama wants to let him sleep with us.  No freaking way.  Dog sleeps downstairs, we sleep upstairs.  I know I am such a mean Dada but he needs to learn.  Ugh!  That sound, make it stop!  Looks like another sleepless night in store.

What have we got ourselves into?

On the way home we stopped at our local Petsmart to pickup puppy survival guide materials.  The list consisted of the follow:

·         Pet crate

·         Gate

·         Bed

·         Pee pads

·         Toys and chew bones

·         Food

·         Treats

·         Poo bags

·         Collar and leash

·         Food & water bowls

·         and two books that in theory were to help us with our new bundle of joy but I am convinced they pretty well said “you are so screwed now dude”

As to be expected, everyone in the store had to stop by and oooh and aaaah over the new puppy and he loved all the attention.  We were checking out and I was talking with someone else in line and then I hear it.  The entire world froze like something out of the Matrix.  With a pleasant worried smile on my face, I ask the checkout lady to please repeat herself I don’t think I heard her correctly.  “No problem sir, your total comes to $186.54.”  Oh cr…

Tornado or Star

While our last attempt of finding a pug in the paper was interesting to say the least, we continued to keep an eye out in the paper and found another potential prospect.  We called the owners up and they said they had two left.  We headed over to their house and were introduced to Tornado and Star, two eleven week old male pug puppies.   Their mom was keeping a close eye on us as the two of them were climbing all over us like we were a jungle gym.  “Why don’t we get both of them” the wife suggest (gee, what a surprise).  I gave her the “there is no way in hell” look.  So now it came time to choose.  Both were full of energy and adorable, however Star sounded like he had some breathing issues. It is ironic but my B.S. degree from college was in Atmospheric Science, so fate it would seem was pointing us towards Tornado.  The owners were really helpful in answering our endless questions and gave us all sorts of goodies to go home with to start our new adventure as pet parents.

We knew that we were not going to keep him named Tornado but we had not decided on a name yet so for now Tornado it shall be.

Welcome our new addition to the family.
Born: March 5th, 2009
Picked Up: May 23rd, 2009

Did I just enter a scene from the movie Deliverance?

The task of finding a pug puppy was a bigger challenge than we expected.   We checked local pet stores, shelters and even went to a pet adoption expo at the local fairgrounds but ended up empty handed.  We had been checking in our local paper and the prices were all over the place.   We found one person that was selling one for $350 and gave her a call.  She sounded nice, so we got her address and decided to go check the little guy out.  As we were driving out there, the scenery changed from nice suburbs, to farmland, to “where the hell are we ville”.  We entered into the neighborhood and while the houses were not the best looking things in the world at least they all had roofs and cement driveways.  As we slowly drove down the street looking for addresses on the houses, we finally came to a stop on the street and looked at the house out the window to our right.  No kidding folks this house (errrr...motorhome?) was like something you would see out of the movie Deliverance.  We sat there for a few moments contemplating what to do.  On one hand we were thinking, “We need to save this puppy from this house.” On the other hand, we were wondering if anything was alive in there or if we would get out of there alive and god knows what condition that puppy would be in.  Sorry to say we did not go home with a puppy today.

The search begins

A month has passed since I told Vanessa the words she had been waiting to hear for years, "We can get a dog now."  The dilemma now was determining what type of dog to get.  I have always wanted to get a lab or golden retriever but unfortunately, we live in a tiny townhouse with no yard so a big dog was out of the question.  Vanessa and I were both in agreement that we did not want a dog that barked nonstop and we knew this was going to be a challenge, since most little dogs bark.   After several trips to Barnes & Noble and lots of research online it was down to two breed choices; pug or French bulldog.  I did not see the cuteness in the look of the French bulldog and the price tag for one was $1500 so that pretty much eliminated that dog from the list.  So in the end, a pug is what it was going to be.  Next step, find one.