The Day Arlo Came Home

A good three months before T and I were thinking about getting a puppy, I was looking at gumtree to see if I could locate any local Great Dane breeders. I had my heart set on getting a Great Dane for years but I was having trouble trying to find a breeder that was relatively close.

By pure chance I came across an ad for a litter of Great Dane puppies that were all black except for one, what looked like a black mantle. On instinct, and without letting T know, I contacted the owner just to find out some more info. We chatted back and forth for a while and I started the learn more about them. She wasn't a registered breeder but from what I gathered her two Danes had had puppies and she was now trying to find good homes for them. All of the puppies were completely black, like their parents, with the exception of the black mantle.

As he had grown, the black colour had started to dilute and he's become a blue mantle. Then I got sent some photos and I was in love with the little face that I saw in the photos.

  

It was then I broke the news to T. I had found a puppy, I was in love and I wanted to go and get him this weekend. It didn't take me long to convince him. Really I just had to show him the photo and he was in love as well.

After work for the next week, we got everything that we could together with the exception of a few things we decided to wait to get on the day (his name tag and food for example). The closer the day came the more excited I became and then T broke it to me that he was going to buy Arlo for me for Christmas - even though Christmas was over a month away. It came out of the blue and even now, Arlo is my favourite Christmas present ever.

  

By Friday we got everything we could but hadn't decided on a name. Pinterest had a thousand names and we narrowed it down to two - Corvis (meaning Raven) and Arlo (a name I had loved since hearing it in a Good Dinosaur). Both of us liked Corvis. There was something about it that we just loved. Arlo was only a favourite of mine, however, which wouldn't have been an issue, if T hadn't decided that he wanted to add Scooby Doo to the list, purely because he wanted to call out "Scooby Doo, where are you?" whenever he couldn't see him. In the end, we decided that we would wait until we saw him in person to decide on a name.

On Saturday, T and I drove the three hours out to where Arlo was living. They were forty minutes away from T's parent's house so it made sense that we would go and get him and drop in on the way home. The drive was easy and I was filled with excitement. I'd had dogs growing up but they were always working dogs, dogs that helped my Dad on the farm. I didn't have the same experience raising them because once they reached a certain age they stopped being puppies we had around the house and would start going with Dad to help with the sheep. We also had Charlie, my Mum's house dog, but he was Mum's and he loved her the most.

This was different. Arlo was purely going to be a family dog. I had pictures in my head of him giving me cuddles and loving me. I was looking forward to having my first puppy as an adult and doing it with T. It worked out brilliantly that T was on leave at the time as well so Arlo would adapt to the new environment before T went back to work.

We pulled up in front of the house and the owner was sitting out the front with her daughter and a beautiful little puppy. He was handed over to me and I was more in love than ever. We learnt that the owners daughter was a little sad as he was her favourite and then she asked if she could have some of the money because she had looked after the puppies. We all laughed, chatted for a little longer, got his documents and then T and I were on our way back to T's parents house.

  

 For the first thirty minutes of our drive, Arlo was upset. Then he calmed and cuddled into me. It was on the drive home that we discovered that the collar that I had bought was too big and we needed to get another one. We dropped into PetBarn to get the things that we were missing and continued on our way to T's parents, ready to introduce him to his new Grandparents.

He started responding to his name quickly and other than a few stops on the way home for toilet breaks, the trip went smoothly.

The next two weeks, however, were hard. 3 days after we brought him home we had to take him to the vet and discovered that he had a parasite. His previous owners had no idea at the time they handed him to us as he wasn't showing any symptoms and it took two different kinds of medication to get him all better again.

He was already the runt of the litter so he was small and suddenly he lost so much weight. I was really worried for a while that he was so underweight. He eventually caught up and our Vet has never been at a point where he was overly worried. These days he wants to each all kinds of food, whether it's offered to him or not.

Oh, you're probably wondering how T and I decided on Arlo. That was kind of easy. On the drive to T's parent's house, I looked over at him and just said: "His name is Arlo. How could we call him anything else. His face just says he's an Arlo."

Until next time,

(aka - Sophie)