Meet Louie

You know you probably desperately needed a vacation when you consider logging 2000 miles in 2 days as a get-away. So now we're all clear on how desperate we are up in here. And let me tell you, we could have used those two days to sleep instead of drive. In fact, all day Monday we did the 2-hour switch where one of us drove while the other slept, trading back and forth. And then we crashed that night and slept like dead people.

Part of our trip was delivering the corgis to their new owners, and they got some mighty fine homes. That always makes me happy. The other part of our trip was picking up a replacement puppy to fill Jack's absence. I had a puppy lined up to see, and then mere hours before leaving Sunday evening I called to verify all stops and was told he was sold. How nice of her to let me know that ahead of time, right? So I found another puppy that was actually nicer and lined up a time to get him on the trip. She at least had the decency to call me 2 hours later to say he was gone as well.

Why is buying a puppy so hard?

I left on the trip thinking I just wouldn't get a puppy because of the 3 others I'd found on the route, I had zero returned calls. How do these people think they're going to sell puppies if they don't answer phones? No wonder the babies were 4-6 months old that I was calling about. Sheesh.

As I was sleeping at 10:00 Monday night, I got a phone call from one of the breeders I'd left a message with the day before. I could come look at her puppy the next morning before pulling out of town. She lived an hour away from our hotel, which isn't a bad thing at all when you're 15 hours from home.

I showed up looking for a brindle puppy, and while he was a nice dog it was his wee half brother that caught my eye. The cream boy was by far the better of the two pups, and a stud dog is exactly half your kennel in the business I'm in. He's got to be as perfect as he can be. And this fella was as close as my money could afford. (Note: dogs are far cheaper in Missouri than they are in Pennsylvania. This means that I can get far superior quality elsewhere for the price that my budget allows.) I had to beg the breeder to sell this guy, but she was coerced into parting with him for the exact amount that I'd sold Jack for. It seemed rather providential.

I'm kind of in love with our Louie. He's like a little piece of eye candy, and I can't stop looking at him. I'm now torn between taking him to obedience classes or puppy training for show, which are really two vastly different things. Having that boy in a show ring would make me one happy mama.

Louie, however, isn't all that keen on me at the moment. He associates me as the lady that stuffed him into a crate and drove him 1,000 miles from home. He loves me because he follows me everywhere and licks my heels when I stop, but he just doesn't like me that well. He won't let me touch him unless I bribe him with food. But he'll come around, because I don't have plans to stuff him into a crate and travel with him any time soon. In fact, I plan for this guy to be around for a long, long time. I'm hoping he's a keeper. I have realized that I don't have the luxury of owning dogs as pets, but that doesn't mean my heart never gets involved despite my best intentions. Re-homing Jack hurt. And I've reinvested that lost love into Louie already. This can't be good. Right? But my gosh, this dog is sweet.