A new family member!

Meet Chef!

Well we finally did it! We got a little crazy and adopted a 10 week old puppy (we figure his birthday to be May 1). After a week of trying out names we finally decided on "Chef". He likes to hang out in the kitchen and we all love to cook so we figured the name was perfect for our family dog! He was rescued from a shelter on his last day. He then lived with a foster parent for a week until we found him. He is a mixed breed - we were told he was 1/2 Golden Retriever and 1/2 we don't know. We think he might be 1/2 Beagle because he face looks a lot like a Beagle puppy.

Here is a picture of Beagles - What do you think?

We think he looks a lot like our Golden Lab Buddy when he was a puppy. But the foster mom said he was with his mom when they were at the shelter and she was definetly a Golden Retriever. When shaved, Goldens look a lot like Labs so it is a possibility he got the short hair with the Golden's Color. Here is a picture of a Beagle/Lab mix - looks a lot like Chef!

He is so sweet and docile. The kids could do anything to him and he pretty much lets them without a sound. He does make a sound though if it happens to hurt. We read the Puppies for Dummies book before we got him and we used their "Pick a Puppy" test to pick the right dog for our family. So far he is awesome - except for the fact that we wakes up to potty at night and early in the morning - kinda like having a new baby! Actually it is like having two toddlers. Him and Luke are so much a like right now. You have to constantly watch them or they are into everything! He thinks Lucas is a dog like him.


Now for the sob sob stuff...two days after we brought our puppy home he wasn't acting right so we took him into the vet. It turns out he had parvovirus, hookworms, & coccidia. Poor thing was so sick from being at the shelter at such a young age for 4 weeks. We weren't going to treat him and just let nature take it's course (which probably would have taken him to doggy heaven) but after a couple hours and talking to a few vets we changed our minds! They warned us that we wouldn't be able to get a young (un-vaccinated) puppy for at least 1-3 years and if we did it may come down with parvo also. Since the kids were SOOOOOO upset about the whole thing (and we were quite upset too) we decided to treat him. It was really a traumatic evening in our house - we didn't take him to the vet expecting anything serious to be wrong. The treatment wasn't cheap (so much for rescue dogs being less $$) and we were not up for nursing him back to health at home (as if I have time to do that with 3 kids) so we had the vet take care of him. He was in the hospital for 3 nights hooked up to fluids and different antibiotics to combat secondary infections. They even gave him plasma for a low blood count!!! He was admitted on a Monday and came home on Thursday. We are so glad we had him treated - he is really the best dog. Of course I may be retracting my words in another month or so.

We have also read the book by Cesar Millan (The Dog Whisperer). We are raising him to treat all of us (well maybe except Lucas for now) as the Pack Leader. Cesar's structure for raising a balanced dog is - 1st Exercise, 2nd Discipline, & 3rd Love. We have been watching the show also. Gosh darn it we are going to have a well behaved house dog!