It's a Girl!

Don't worry, I didn't give birth a few months early and I am still very much pregnant with a little boy.  But we do have a new baby girl in our house.  Let me introduce you to Sadie...

Sadie is the lab mix puppy that we adopted from an animal rescue on Sunday! If you read my blog last week she is the first puppy I mentioned there. To be totally honest I had sort of decided that this time around I wanted a pure bred yellow lab puppy. Indy was a lab mix that we adopted from a shelter and while he turned out to be the most wonderful dog I often felt like we just got lucky. Indy behaved pretty much just like a lab- and thankfully that's what we wanted. So this time around I felt like maybe we shouldn't chance it and we should just get a pure bred lab. I was also fairly certain that I wanted a different color this time (yellow) so that our puppy wouldn't constantly remind us of Indy. That's what I thought I wanted. Joe was more open to the idea of adopting another lab mix from a shelter, but I just wasn't excited at all about any of the pups he was finding. And then my friend Sarah posted a picture for me of a lab mix puppy that was available through a animal rescue in Southern Maine. It was Sadie (who was named Blondie then). And I instantly fell in love with her. There was just something there and I just knew that she was the one...she was ours. 

 This animal rescue brings dogs up from kill shelters in the south and Sadie arrived in Maine last week (we think from Florida or Georgia, but I'm not totally sure yet). Everything moved quickly and we were approved to adopt her. But then one of the other dogs on her transport was infected with the parvo virus and all of the dogs (including her) had to be in quarantine. We didn't know if she is healthy and we really had no idea if or when we would be able to adopt her. That's when I began thinking again about other options. But I just couldn't get this sweet little lab out of my mind and it just felt like she was meant to be ours. We didn't know what to do. Joe left to lead a men's outreach in New Hampshire over the weekend and I kept allowing myself to daydream that maybe the rescue would contact Joe while he was away and that somehow someway he would still be able to at least see the puppy on his way. Okay, I dreamed too that he would bring her home, but I never really allowed myself to believe that was an option. But then on Sunday morning I got a call from the animal rescue and was told that Sadie was released from quarantine because her medical records showed that she already had the virus (in fact, it almost killed her not long ago). After a short flurry of calls everything fell into place. On his way back home Joe stopped to meet her, knew she was the one after a few minutes, and brought her home that evening!!! 

I just can't even tell you how much we are all in love with her. She may not be exactly what I thought I wanted, but sometimes that just doesn't matter at all...because I think that she was meant to be a part of our little (growing) family. She is just totally precious and overall such a good puppy. Sadie is really sweet and playful. She loves playing fetch and chase and playing with just about any toy we give her. The kids are over the moon with her and love that she will actually play with them. She's a pretty good little retriever. And when she's not playing she is the sweetest little snuggler ever. She loves to just curl up right next to you or in your lap and my heart melts every time. She also loves to give kisses (complete with puppy breath and all). She is very affectionate. And though she is very playful and clearly has a thing for shoes she is actually fairly mellow for a puppy. She does have energy and she does like to chew (and for some reason she gets really excited by Lily's hair and trying to catch her dress) but she is a puppy and she is pretty easily distracted. 

 We don't know too much about her background yet (and much of it we may never know). What we do know is that she is a black lab mixed with something (but what exactly we have few ideas). She has the sweetest little bob tail, a large white patch on her chest, and white patches on her back feet (and one adorable spotted toe). She has one little patch on each ear that doesn't have fur (and won't ever have fur) that they say is a birth defect. She is about 10-11 weeks old and is little right now (maybe 10-12 pounds). She came to Maine with a sister who is a little bigger (and has been adopted by another family). She was very sick with the parvo virus and almost didn't make it. The animal rescue called her their miracle baby. You would never know now because she seems perfectly healthy. She is wonderfully crate trained and amazingly she goes into her crate at night (in our living room) without a peep and sleeps through the night (without any accidents). During the day is a different story. She will go to the bathroom outside almost every time we go out, but she will also just as readily go to the bathroom in the house...so that will be a process. But again, she's a puppy and we sort of expected that.

 Overall we are just taken with her. She is the sweetest, most snuggly little thing. But she's also full of energy and playful. She's great with the kids and she is fitting in just perfectly with our family. We got "lucky" with Indy the first time around and I think that it may just have happened again! It just feels right having a black lab in the house again!:) There is much puppy love happening in our house these days... This is a picture of Joe and Sadie taken by the animal rescue the day that Joe picked her up (the rest of the pictures are mine):