Monday, August 17, 2009

How much is that puppy in the window...

My sister, Lesley, and I learned an important lesson learned this week.

If you're not ready to take a puppy home, don't even THINK about going to play with one.

Les came and visited us for the past week before she had to head back to Baylor. We had such a blast together, exploring Indianapolis and just hanging out. On her last day here, we had the bright idea to go visit a store here where you can buy puppies. Let me immediately silence any suspicions that these puppies come from puppy mills - they absolutely do not - we did our research and know this for a fact.

I posted a few months ago that we had found a female to breed Stryder with. We were planning to get one of their puppies this December, and so was Lesley. Unfortunately, we discovered in June that this female has hip dysplasia. Obviously, this disqualifies her from breeding.

Besides just giving Stryder a companion, Brian and I feel very strongly that we need to raise a puppy together before we begin adding human babies to our family. And we both really want to continue Stryder's line with another male (Stryder is the son of Mannley, the dog we had while growing up - they are just the sweetest, handsomest, most faithful dogs). So, we have a few options:

1. Forget about breeding Stryder and just buy another male.
OR
2. Continue trying to find a female to breed Stryder with (this could take months or years).
OR
3. Add a female to our family now and breed her with Stryder a few years down the road.

We have decided to go with the latter, since we are running out of time before we will begin trying to start a family. We've been researching breeders all over the country and have settled on one in northern Indiana who will have puppies ready for new homes in mid-November.

Lesley, however, still had puppy fever. We truly weren't thinking that she would buy one when we decided to go to the store - we just wanted to go play with a puppy to get it out of her system for a while. Well, the second we walked in the door and saw her, Les was head over heels.

Meet sweet Stella. Isn't she precious?

Stryder even shared his toys with her! Welcome to the family, sweet girl!

3 comments:

The Bailes said...

LOVE the name Stella...she is too cute! Glad that you found a friend in IN to breed Stryder with. I hope that helps with your parenting skills :) I'm not sure how much raising Leroy helped Lea and I, but we sure love the little guy. I'm happy you did your research and bought a non-puppy mill dog too!

Meredith said...

Such a cutie!!! We want a playmate for Shelby too but it would be hard to have a puppy right now :-) Hopefully down the road!

Emily said...

Oh, she is so cute! Well, by the time you breed Stryder, maybe we'll be ready for a dog. :)