Newest Family Member

You may (or may not) recognize this dog…

as the same dog featured here in a post from a year ago…

Yes, she is a little bigger and gratefully, quite a bit calmer.

My brother wasn’t able to keep her anymore due to “no pet” rules at his new place, so we hesitantly, at first, agreed to bring her to our home where we have a lot of space for a big dog like this to run.

We said we’d do a three week trial and if it didn’t work out, we’d have to find her a home outside of our family…

And it has been three weeks.  Verdict?

She’s staying.  She is very calm, very trainable, and loves being by Ben’s side.  I think Ben likes having a “real” dog.  No offense, Atlas.  Really.  Ben moves water with her by his side and has already trained her to ignore the cows…it definitely wasn’t immediate, though. 

The first night, Ben and I took her out to move water and Ben thought, “we’ll see how she does.”  Well, she got curious and moved a little too close to the cows and they bolted.  The chase began and took us 10 minutes to stop.  After that, we knew she needed a little more restraint…and after 3 weeks and a couple more chases, she now KNOWS and we haven’t had a problem.

We also took her on our waterfall trail hike (picture above) and discovered she LOVES water.  She digs at it and bites the splashes for hours.   So, the lake is a hit AND she also loves to move pipe with Ben…she waits at the end of the pipe for the water to splash out then chases and bites at the moving pipe as if it is playing with her.  Whatever?  She seems happy and the boys love her.

Bryson was having a rough afternoon fighting with his brother, so he went out to the garage…I found him sitting on the step with the dog’s head in his lap happy as can be.  Nothing like a loving dog to make a little boy feel better.

Welcome to our family!