January 28, 2007

Sunday morning we went to church, we were probably there in body, but not in mind. We were trying to decide whether or not to keep our over night friend. On the car ride to and from church, Sarah and I talked about the pros and the cons of keeping him, and whether we were going to be able to handle the commitment.

We both thought that for at least a month, if not a couple, one of us would have to come home and let the puppy out to do his business. We heard that a young dog can hold his bladder one hour longer than he is months old, so with him being just over 8 weeks, that meant not very long.

When we got home, Sarah expressed to me that she wanted to keep him. I didn’t picture giving him back, but at the same time I was unsure if he would be our puppy or not. I think for me, it was her want that made me take the plunge. About 2:00 we headed down to Petsmart with our puppy to see what would need to be done to make him a permanent member of our family.

We were at Petsmart for about 2 hours, there was a lot to do. We had a number of forms to fill out, one of which was a waiver for the dog’s health and any sort of guarantees. We thought about it, but there isn’t anything you can do, if you want a dog from them, you had to sign the waiver and we never thought it would ever be an issue for us. Part of the happiest news, and something small I took as a sign, the dogs were going for $40 today, instead of the $60 yesterday, so I thought that was a pretty good deal.

We carried him around as we went from place to place. As we got through with forms, we took him into the local vet hospital that is located inside Petsmart and had them do a simple preliminary check over for his health and to see if there was anything wrong. I wrote a whole article about this in my “Opinions” section. It was an ok look over, but beyond something obvious like the puppy missing an eye, it really didn’t do anything other than for a simpleminded person who may believe an ok from a vet assistant meant they had some ultimate power to read the puppy’s mind.

Nothing against that vet assistant though, she was very nice. We talked to her, trying to figure out what we were going to name him. She had a couple of dogs, and the names just came to her. Her biggest piece of advice was to not second guess our first thought and just go with it, so we took that to heart and went about our other necessities.

Then, we had to go get food. We got a long education from one very knowledgeable worker at the store about different foods, what was good, what wasn’t, etc. etc. Then, we had to a book of coupons, so we had to hunt around the store for the initial necessities, a collar, a lease, and one toy. Then, as if there wasn’t enough already, if we wanted some of the deals we had to sign up for the official Petsmart card.

But by late afternoon, our new unnamed puppy was all ours and we took him home.

The lady that gave us all the advice on the food, told us a story about a lady she had met that wanted to bottle up Puppy breath so she could smell it anytime she wanted. Uh, right…Not us. We do not like the dog’s breath, and hope it goes away, but are going to be proactive about it as well. We got him some green breath fresheners and he seems to like them. He had better, his breath stinks like stale poop.

The rest of the night we laid around and took turns playing with him and just hanging out upstairs in front of the tv. Eventually we had to put the puppy to bed, so we took the box that we had kept him in, into the room and put it next to the bed so we could keep an eye on him.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• January 31, 2007
• January 27, 2007
• January 30, 2007
• January 29, 2007
• April 7, 2007

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