Our New Puppy

So it turns out the the dog that was supposed to give birth to our puppy was never actually pregnant. The breeder thought it was but it turned out not to be the case. I really don't know much about breeding dogs so I really have no idea how to tell if they are pregnant besides their bellies getting fat. The problem is that they also tend to get fat if they are being fed the high energy foods that pregnant dogs are supposed to eat. Anyway, when we found out that it wouldn't be until next spring that the dog would be having pups again, we decided to call one of the other breeds that we liked. She luckily had one pup that was ready to go home on the weekend and 2 more that would be ready in 2 weeks. We decided to pay her a visit on Saturday in hopes of bringing home the puppy that was ready....and we did! He was really cute and really playful. He was also very comfortable with other people (both adults and children) and animals, although not too hyper. We decided to take him right away. We didn't even look at the other puppies because I couldn't bear to play with them and then not take them home. The car ride home was great, he just slept most of the time. We did have to stop at Pet Value on Hwy 8 to pick up a ball though because he wouldn't stop chewing on the seat belt buckles. Once he got home he had many visitors and had tons of time to play. He actually slept through the night on Saturday...that was the end of that....Yesterday he suffered from separation anxiety. Not from his mother though, but from us. We went grocery shopping for an hour and came home to the sound of him howling all the way down the condo hallway. He was quickly moved into the bedroom (less echoey). He was quite the handful, crying whenever we weren't able to have him sitting in our lap. I'm thinking I want to extinguish the lap sitting behaviour as soon as possible before he grows up. It is cute now but in the future I could see it being very annoying. We took him for a walk around the park to release some of his energy and found that he really enjoys tennis. He must take after his daddy :) He ran right up to the fence and then sat down and watched the ball go back and forth. Anyway, he kept us up all night and now I"m falling asleep so I must go take a nap. Here is a picture of our puppy. We call him Tanner but his formal name is "Ataboy Six Pence All the Richer". (Ataboy being the name of the breeder, it is mandatory to include this on his papers). For those of you who don't know, six pence is called a tanner in England.

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