Sunday Night, Dog Night

This is officially a “non-funeral home” related column.

If you have been reading my columns for any length of time, you may recall that we are a dog family…a husband, a wife, three daughters and two Black Labs.

What more can a guy that works six days a week ask for?…two more puppies?

As a matter of fact, that is exactly what we are getting. (Gulp)

We have always gotten a new puppy as our current dogs got older so the older dog can train the rookie on how to act in our house. It works well and is a way to build bench strength on our pet team.

Our current dogs are Maggie and Snickers. Maggie is a bread “English, Block head Lab” and Snickers is a “long nose, American Lab”. Maggie was the “trainee” as our Yellow Lab, “Chip” got on in years.

When Chip died, we adopted Snickers after he was abandoned at the annual Aiken Steeplechase. Snickers and Maggie are both about the same age (seven years old) and size (fat). Unless you look at their faces, you can’t tell the difference between the two. They are inseparable and are literally shadows of each other.

My wife and three daughters have been talking about a puppy for some time now. I have been, as usual, neutral, but enthusiastic in the discussions. Now we have to start making some plans.

We recently became aware of a family near Lincolnton, GA that breeds Labs for the fun of doing so. A friend of ours has a lake house next door to them and alerted us that a new litter was born on June 9th. The breeder interviewed my wife and it was decided that we would get one of the four females of the litter. We visited the home a few times (an hour and a half drive each way) and got introduced to the ten puppies. The breeder identified each of the puppies with different color ribbon around the neck. After a few visits and days of indecision, we decided on the female with the pink ribbon and named her “Kenzie”, short for Mackenzie. While we were making those visits, one of the six males was making a big impression on us. “Big Red” was stealing the show and it wasn’t long before we asked if we could take him too. It was a “coincidence” that only five of the males were spoken for and no one had actually picked one out yet. Yikes, two puppies soon to be on their way to Aiken, adding to the existing two dogs. We will soon have our own “Pack”.

Below are some pictures of the puppies taken by my daughter, Elissa. I will keep you posted on their progress. We should bring them home around August 10th. Pray for me.

Kenzie, the female

Big Red, the male

The proud mama, Molly...retriever extrodinaire