Doggie Chronicles

I have always envisioned myself as a dog owner but I wanted to do it on my terms. I wanted the dog I wanted when I wanted it and he would be easy to train and well-behaved and so on and so forth. Tara thought if we got a pet it would be a cat. She's not a fan of the dog neediness(is that a word?). We'd talked about getting one and people would tell us getting one is good prep for having a baby, which we are trying to do, but we'd never done anything to really move toward getting a pet. It remained on that "Yeah, one day, probably." list.

In August we went to a BBQ at a friend's house and we were greeted by this black & white splotched puppy. It was a very cute, happy, friendly puppy but I didn't think much about him. Then, from across the room, my very unimpulsive, cat-loving wife said "can we keep him?". I was stunned. One, because I would we hadn't planned for it. Two, Tara doesn't say things like that. Three, Tara didn't want a dog. We talked about it when we got home and Kathy, the "owner of the dog" said we could do it on a trial basis. Her family was going out of town and we could keep "Freckles" and see.


The story was that Brian, the husband, found the dog at a hotel while he was on a business trip. According to the staff, the dog had been at the hotel for a few days. Brian knew he couldn't leave the dog so he didn't. He figured he could find a home if his family didn't want to keep him. Sounds like a great plan, right? They already had one dog, a couple of cats, a 4-year old boy and another boy on the way. Well, this dog proved to be a little more rambunctious and a little stronger than Carter, the 4-year old liked.

Before we brought him home Tara started planning. She brought our handyman over to complete the backyard fence - I hate it but it works and that's a different story - she started looking into puppy classes and other things so I knew this was not a temporary thing. We brought him home and he was a blast. We kept him in the bathroom the first couple of days and then found a crate. We had to push him in it in for the longest but now, we have a calm down routine and he just has to be nudged.

After a week or so one of our friends, Niki, came up with a new name...Johnders Sanson. My name is Sanders and Tara is Johnson, hopefully you can figure it out. Next for Johnders was training...

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