Puppy

On Sunday afternoon, after resting from our return trip, Amanda and I went to a friend's house to pick up the puppy I wanted to get. A former co-worker of mine and his wife had recently gotten a dog from the pound as a companion to their other dog. It turned out the dog they got was already pregnant, so shortly after they had a litter of 7 puppies. I have been wanting a puppy for a while, since it had been two years since my previous dog died, but was just kinda waiting. They offered me one and after thinking it through and weighing the pros and cons I decided to go for it. I had seen the litter a few times before and had my eye on one in particular. All of them were cute but she stood out from the rest - most of them had multi-colored and very fluffy hair, but hers is a light tan that's short and soft. The mother is a Corgi (or mostly so - i'm not sure), and from the looks of it there could quite possibly be more than one father. My guess is that mine has some lab in her but i don't know; i guess we'll find out more as she grows. Anyway, we brought her back to my apartment and let her sniff around her new home, then introduced her to the toys Amanda had bought for her and played with her for a while before Amanda had to leave.

I was thinking through what to name her - I wanted it to be something that had some sort of significance yet was unique at the same time. After a short while I thought about using something from the Lord of the Rings, and eventually came up with the 3 elven rings: Narya, Nenya, and Vilya. I chose Nenya for a few reasons. Nenya was worn by Galadriel and is made of mithril set with a white stone. Galadriel is the fairest of the elves and my puppy is the fairest of her litter (at least I think so), also she has a white spot on the top of her head which I felt really fits well. Nenya is also the ring of water, but I'm not sure how that applies - maybe it will later. Amanda wants to get a cat when she graduates and is now considering naming it Vilya once she does.

It's been interesting so far. Initially I of course had to clean up a few different messes, but recently she's been doing really well with the housebreaking process. At one point when she was asleep I left to run some errands, and when I returned found out she had chewed up one of my surround sound speaker cables. It still works but is extremely faint compared to the others, and unfortunately I don't think I can order them seperately. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy. I got a large cardboard box to put her in (with the top open) during the night, but she got out of it by the second night (even when i taped the flaps up and partially coverd it). So I had to break down and buy one of those crate things. She doesn't like it too well, but it's very nice to know she won't be pottying around the apartment or chewing on things she's not supposed to. She does wake me up in the morning though. :(

She's adjusting very well and is very playful and energetic! She has lots of fun running around, jumping, pouncing, and chewing on her toys. I took her to the vet and she loved meeting new people; she weighed in at 7.2 lbs. She's not too fond of going out in the cold weather (not that I can blame her), but she likes eating the snow and chewing on leaves. Once she gets a bit older I'm going to start training her with basic commands.