Saturday, January 5, 2008

New Year, Why Not Start a Blog?

Happy New Year. I hope 2008 has already treated you well. I have been wanting to start a blog for some time, but I felt I didn't have enough action in my life to share. Well there is a little more action around here these days. We recently decided to adopt a new Labrador to add to our family. For those of you who don't know we already have two fantastic female black labs. Our oldest is only 2 1/2 years old. Her name is Taryn. Our other girl is Kylie, she is almost exactly one year younger than Taryn. Our love for our two dogs and their breed has always drawn me to a labrador rescue here in Colorado called Safe Harbor Lab Rescue. They are located in Golden which is a town West of Denver. I go to their web site frequently to view the available dogs just in case they have a dog that could fit in well with our family. We decided to fill out an adoption application because we thought it would be a lengthy process to get approved and find a dog. We were wrong about that! The agency contacted our references almost immediately to interview them about our dog parenting skills. One of our references was our next door neighbor because she gets a peek into our daily lives with our dogs. She also has a dog that she rescued from a family that had way too many dogs to care for them properly. Her dog Bailey is great. He is one of our best friends and comes over often to play and hang out. I have gotten off the topic... anyway SHLR contaced me very quickly to plan a meeting with a dog. The meeting didn't go too well. This gorgeous boy jumped our fence after less than 15 minutes here. He wanted to go play with Bailey next door! We knew that he scaled the fence way too easily and wouldn't work out well here. We then fostered a female black lab post her spay surgery. She was a sweetie, but had some issues. Not the dog for us. We were getting a little discouraged when the adoption coordinator recommended we meet Violet, a 5 month old black female lab coming straight from her litter of 4 other black females. All of the girls had been spayed and vaccinated, SHLR provided all of her medical needs. We fell in love with this little girl instantly! I'm a softy, so I was ready to adopt after one look into her eyes. Mark is always a little more guarded and doesn't want to make an emotional decision. The little girl was smart. She instantly approached him and turned on the cute. He was butter in her paws. So the newest member of our family is Payton, formerly Violet (that's her in the picture above and in the header). All of her litter was named after a flower. They were a puppy bouquet! It is really common to rename rescue dogs. New life, new name. She seemed to know her name after only a couple of days. She is extremely smart, loveable, and easy going. She was acting like she had been here forever after only a couple of hours. Very impressive for her age. Taryn and Kylie get along with her really well. She has qualities that both of the dogs can relate to. I will blog as often as I can and share dog info and stories about my life with my girls.


Peace,
Jamie

1 comment:

Joan said...

Kudos to you and Mark, Jamie. Your work with rescue is invaluable, as is your wisdom in taking only the dog who would be right for you.

Congrats! Your dogs (all three) are beautiful, and I'm sure they give you as much joy as our five do us.

Funny, isn't it, how each one is unique -- has her own style and personality and quirks. I never quite understood how shepherds could know their sheep by name until we had our own "herd" of Labs (sheep all look the same to me).

And we wouldn't trade any one of them; we love them to pieces!

I hope all goes well for you. And welcome to blogging! I look forward to more posts!

Joan (from LabTails)