I've known that it might be in the works for a while now, but I was keeping quiet until it was official - and that was REALLY hard to do!
Ben and I have wanted a dog for a long time. We've been seriously looking into it for almost a year now. Last May we started looking into apartments that would let us have a dog but with our job situations at the time we didn't want to sign into a year long lease and good thing we didn't!
But now we're happily living in Merrimack and with a reasonable sized yard, a job that lets me bring a pup to work, and our active lifestyle we just knew a dog was right for us.
While it is very attractive to get a puppy we decided that we'd adopt an older dog because we wanted it to be a little more "field ready" for us and would let us transition into the dog lifestyle without needing to housebreak and teach a dog everything from a to z.
As some of you may know, I've always been a fan of Border Collies. Long before my family had BC's, we had shelties, but I always wanted a BC. Eventually our first BC, Meg, came to us in sheltie rescue (figure that one out!) and while she was a tough nut to crack, she became everyone's love.
Meg (pictured above) was my buddy for a long long time and it killed me every time I had to leave to go off to college or away for a while but she always perked up when I got home even when she was blind and deaf. Well up to just a few months before she passed away she still wanted to swim and play every time I came home. Unfortunately, as all of us do, Meg eventually passed. Fortunately she lived to be a ripe old 18 and lived quite the full life.
In addition to Meg my mother has raised a number of solid BC's who are all fun, sharp, and loving. And being the stubborn person that I am, I wanted a BC despite knowing how challenging they can be at times. Fortunately, Ben and I got lucky because a fantastic dog named Doc (below) was brought to our attention. He was the former Canadian Nursery Champion in 2005 and is, way more importantly to us, one of the sweetest, most gentle, friendly dogs we'd ever met.
On Saturday 3/16/13, I picked Doc up and took him to live with us in NH. He wasn't a huge fan of the car ride but made it OK. The first night he seemed a little down but since then he has adjusted to cuddles in NH very well. He loves going for walks (below) and loves to beg for food.
Ben and I feel very lucky to have such a great dog in our lives and are really excited to see how things progress over the next few weeks.
I'm sure there will be lots of posts about Doc as we are so excited and in many ways he's like our first "kid", unless you count our 10 fish, but they're a little less cuddly...
