Henry

Last month marked one year since we brought our then-latest canine addition into our home: a Lab~Austrailian Shpherd mix, that I dubbed "Henry". Henry's original puppy name was "Peter", which isn't bad, just didn't feel like the right 'fit' :-)

In early 2010, we lost two (2) of our dogs: Sam, a 12 y/o beagle and found out our 11 y/o Lab, Jake, had skin cancer. Jake survived longer than the normal time for that type of cancer diagnosis, but finally died in May. Have to be honest-that was a tough one! Jake was the first dog we had gotten as a puppy. He came home as a 12lb ball of fur and VERY quickly grew into a 125lb. couch potato.

When we got Jake, we weren't doing the "let's see if we can handle a puppy and if we do ok, maybe we won't screw up the baby" thing. We'd already been married 6+ years. I think at that time, I already had some 'whispers' in my head that our "when are you going to start a family" was turning into a 'hmm, something might not be right'. At the time I was just starting on a big work effort (remember Y2K??) and had that to keep from worrying about what 'might' be going on.

I knew Robert wasn't keyed up about adding a new dog to the house. Jake was the Gilligan to his Skipper: his big, little buddy. They'd been pals for almost 12 years. Jake was great with me, but he 'belonged' to Robert. Our 2 remaining dogs are also both 10+ years old. I just couldn't see us with an empty house - or having just one surviving dog, who'd always been part of a pack.

So.....I took the initiative and started looking online & on our work classifieds for puppies. Finally, I found "it". I found our new puppy. Still can't explain it....but something about the picture on petfinder.com website got to me :-) And...even better, he was just over in Auburn and not off in Nebraska, or Timbuktu. I contacted the rescue group and THEN told Robert ( but before SETI led out the application...promise:-) In 17+ years, this was first time I'd gone out on that long of a limb.

Call it a 'calculated risk', but I knew this was right for us...and a year later, it has been :-). I wasn't looking for another lab-promise :-). H was listed as an Aussie, but turned out to look like a mini-Lab, but hates water, is skittish, and well, just kind of goofy. Hismpersonality is nothing like his outer 'shell'. He had a lot of health issues to deal with - so in a sense, we both rescued each other. We gave Henry a home and he helped us get over our loss. At the end of the day...not sure who gets the better deal, but it's going to be fun finding out!!!

Henry