The Day Daphne Came Home

Yesterday was the anniversary of when we got Daphne. Our beautiful, gorgeous, too smart for her own good girl. I wanted to jot this down just like I did with Arlo, because as time goes on I'd like to be able to remember these days and what happened, but like with Arlo there is a little bit of a backstory on how we got Daphne.

After we brought Arlo home, we started looking into getting a playmate for him. We had no intention of leaving him alone when T went back to work and it didn't seem fair that he would be home on his own once the end of January came. So we looked into adopting from the RSPCA.

  

We found a beautiful boy that we loved, but due to Arlo's age and lack of shots at that stage the people at the RSPCA couldn't safely say that he would be safe from anything in the meeting areas. Just because they knew the dogs under their care were vaccinated and fine, it didn't mean people with dogs who had brought them in to meet other dogs were as protected. With that knowledge, we decided that despite the fact that we wanted to adopt, we may have to go down a different road to ensure that Arlo got a playmate.

So T started looking of Gumtree for any dogs that needed to be rehomed. We knew that Arlo was going to be good around older dogs. Since about a week after he came home, we had been looking after Eli - T's brother J's dog - and Bolt - J's housemate's dog - while they were moving into a new house. Arlo loved the other dogs and they just let him walk all over him - literally.

After a couple of days of looking, T turned to me one night and showed me a picture of a litter of puppies. They were German Shepherd cross rottweiler/kelpies and there were four in total. One girl was left. They were ready to go home at 8 weeks which was two weeks away. Looking at T's face I knew that he had fallen totally in love.

They were nearly totally black, with touches of tan and I really wish now that I had saved those photos like I had with Arlo, but before I was able to the ad was taken down. T had immediately agreed to take her and just like that we were set to get another puppy, and not a fully grown dog like we had planned.

Over the next two weeks, we discussed names and T kept going back to Daphne. Why? Becuase he still wanted to call Arlo Scooby Doo and what is Scooby without a Daphne. Plus she kind of looked like a redhead in spots.

Soon the day came and we made the half hour drive to pick her up, leaving Arlo at home just to be safe.

Daphne was so little. I had thought Arlo was tiny but she was so little. She had a little bump on the side of her nose and she was just so sweet. And just like T had done for me with Arlo, I did the same with him for Daphne. She became his early Christmas present. The handover was so smooth and we were heading home within 10 minutes of chatting with the owners.

We did make one stop on the way home, and that was to get Daphne a collar and name tag. Just as we had done for Arlo.

Then the moment of truth had arrived: How was Arlo going to react?

    

He was excited but didn't know how to play with a smaller dog, so that took a little bit of time to work out for him. Luckily, Daphne was smart and she didn't let Arlo get things over her. Within ten minutes we had them outside and Daphne was giving as good as she got to Arlo.

Like Arlo stuck with me, Daphne stuck with T. She has always been his girl. Every chance she gets she snuggles up to him and then just gives me this look. The funny thing is that T was adamant that he wanted to get a male dog and yet this little girl has managed to get him wrapped around her finger. Or paw if you wish. 

A lot has changed since we got her, but most of that is the way she looks. She's no longer that mostly black puppy and she's still as smart as the day we got her. Actually, thinking about it, she's a lot smarter. Since we brought her home she's worked out how to open the doors to go outside, which is why the front screen door in particular needs to be locked.

She also no longer has a little bump on her nose. I kind of miss it.

Until next time,

(aka - Sophie)

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)