We're Getting a Dog...?!

This is the first of what I hope to be many blogs... given my schedule, responsibilites, and now brand new puppy we'll see how well I stay on top of this. At any rate, here's goes! Some of you have probably already read what's written below, but for those who haven' yet, this was the email I sent out to my family on the day we brough Chanel home... that being today...

Eight months, eight days into our marriage and Jon and I have added one more to our family. Today we go from a happy couple to a very happy three-some as we are currently on our way home with our very own dog! :) She's a three and a half year old Akita and attached is a pretty bad picture of her I took with my phone.

Not to worry, there will be plenty more pictures to come that will actually be pretty good. Currently her name is Chanel, (as in the perfume) and that's probably the name we'll stick with. We thought about giving her the Japanese name, Takara, meaning treasure, seeing as how she's a Japanese dog, but decided to just stick with her current name. It's possible we'll change our mind on that one, but probably not.

The Aunt and Uncle of a student of mine were the owners of Chanel. They travel a lot and when they are home they tend to be out pretty late and feel really bad that they can't be home with her and give her attention. After several months of debate they finally decided to try to find a good home to put her in. Trent, the student, sent an email to Tim, (my boss and as you probably remember, maid-of-honor) because he already has two Akitas, (which you may remember as well from the wedding). Jon and I had been talking about getting an Akita puppy next summer from the same breeder Tim got his dogs from. So when this opportunity arose we spent many hours discussing if we could make this work. We had been planning a trip to Bakersfield for Father's Day and the Thurs before was when we found out about Chanel. Friday we found out she was in Bakersfield. Sat we called to see if we could come by and meet them and the dog on Sun. Sun night after we got home, (after spending the three hour drive discussing all different aspects of having a dog) we called them up to let them know we'd like to have her and could we come up the following weekend.

So here we are... we drove up last night and spent the night with Mom and Dad and after breakfast at Pannera Bread we met up with Jerry and Sue, the Aunt and Uncle. We spent some time with them and had lunch and then packed up Chanel. I had decided a week ago that I wanted to get Jerry and Sue a gift. Even though they wanted to find her a new home it still felt a little bit like we were taking their dog. Plus, just because it's the right thing to do doesn't mean it's easy. I wanted to get them something to, in a way, say thank you for entrusting us with your dog. I was racking my brain trying to come up with something that would be special yet having a hard time since I had only met them once. When we left Pannera I suddenly had a wave of insight. I remembered from our meeting with them that they had lost many an inflatable pool toy to the fangs of Chanel. And with a Target in the same parking lot as Pannera we picked up a couple inner tubes and a beach ball before heading over for lunch. It was perfect and both Jerry and Sue laughed pretty hard when they opened the gift!

We're pretty excited about our new puppy, though most people probably won't agree that she's a puppy. And we're looking forward to all the new adventures we're going to have with her! :)