Say Hello to Dash

It was a crazy idea, but it was mine. For the last couple of months I have been telling Rod that I think we need a dog. He would call me crazy and blow me off. I started to get more serious about it, but he said that we could get one in a year or two. Well, after Rod's parents got a dog, I got more leverage. I finally talked him into it. The process of finding a dog was painful. There was several trips to the dog shelter where I realized that I had a glorified idea of what getting a dog was all about. We had so many things to consider in selecting a dog. We needed the dog to get along with the kids and the cats. I also thought that the idea of the dog being house trained already was a huge plus.

I had researched many breeds. There are several breeds good with kids, but not as many small breeds. I wanted a dog around 20-30 pounds max. Since we camp in the summer the dog has to be able to fit with us in the camper! I had decided on the American Eskimo dog from the beginning. They are known for being good with kids and protecting them. Rod wasn't as convinced since they have a longer white haired coat. It was a long process of what to do and what would be best. In the end, we were strongly considering getting a small puppy since it's so hard to know what a grown dog's habits are truly like.

I had also being checking out Craig's list to see what was available. On Friday night I saw a ad for a 7 month American Eskimo dog. He is a male and is house broken. He was everything that I wanted. We went and looked at him and got him on Saturday. It was a great price and they gave us his cage, food and toys.

The transition to having a dog in the family hasn't been the easiest, but it gets easier every day. He had a couple of accidents the first two days, but seems to have the house training down now. I am sure he didn't consider the transition easy either. He has a lot of energy and trying to control all of his excitement has proven difficult at times. He is still a puppy and I don't think he had a lot of behavior training in his previous home. We are working on training him and he does seem to be catching on some.

The kids are enjoying him and he has been very good with them so far. When Rod was rough housing with the kids last night the dog came to their defense. In his defense process he didn't do the greatest job at only getting Rod, but he didn't hurt the kids in the process.

His name when we got him was Ozzy (after Osbourne). We decided to change his name since he didn't seem to know it very well anyway. We let Caleb pick. I gave some options and we ended up with Dasher, Dash for short. Caleb likes it because one of his favorite characters is Dash from the Disney movie, the Incredibles. I wanted Scrappy! Rod and Caleb but a nix on that.

It should continue to be an interesting time.