Barkley

On February 15th, our family grew by four feet...canine feet that is :) When Maggie passed away in November we didn't make any plans to get another pet anytime soon. We decided to just take it one day, one week, one month at a time and enjoy being together as a family. Occasionally, I would look through the Facebook page of pets at the local animal shelter that needed a forever home. I also found some websites selling golden retrievers but none of them were in our price range, so I started telling myself that another golden probably wouldn't happen. 

Then came President's Day...Josh spent the day off from work and well, if you know Josh then you know that the man can research like no one else. He will go from one website to another and just digest incredible amounts of information when he is researching something he wants to buy. He just happened to look at one of the websites selling golden retriever puppies and saw that there was a litter that had been marked down to a reasonable price. He called and inquired about the litter and talked to the breeder for quite some time. He found out that they were only about 2 hours away from where we lived and that there was one male left in the litter. The breeder sent Josh several photos of the puppies and we both agreed that we wanted to try a male this time. While I'm teaching at school that morning, Josh keeps sending me texts and pictures of all the puppies. I was so excited about the thought of getting another puppy, but more than that I was so excited about Eli having a puppy that would be his. 

We decided to keep it a surprise from Eli and just told him that we were going on a road trip after school on Wednesday. He didn't get to take a nap at school that day because we dismissed early so he crashed pretty quickly once we were in the car and slept the entire way there. When we pulled up to the house where the breeder lived, Eli woke up but couldn't figure out where we were. I decided to play a little trick on him and pointed to some chickens that were in the yard and told him that we had decided to get some chickens. The catch was that he had to go capture the one he wanted to be his. That sweet boy started unbuckling his seat belt because he was so excited about trying to go catch his chicken. I had to quickly tell him that really wasn't why we were there and then we drove to the back where the puppies were. The look on his face when he realized that he was going to get a puppy was priceless! It was the sweetest thing ever! 

The breeder let the puppies out of the pen and we watched them run around, jump, climb, play and have fun together. We showed Eli which one was the boy and he tried his best to catch him but he was really fast. He had lots of fun chasing all the puppies around while we talked to the breeder. We got all the paperwork and then it was time to load up and drive home. Eli couldn't wait to hold his puppy in his lap :)

While we were driving home we started thinking of names for our newest family member. I had originally thought we were going to name him Jake, but Eli didn't like that name. Josh liked Champ but Eli didn't like that one either. I started to think of the names of golden retrievers from different movies I'd seen and remembered that Tom Hanks had a golden retriever named Barkley in the movie "You've Got Mail." I threw out the name Barkley and Eli loved it, so it was official...we had a Barkley.

We stopped by Tractor Supply Company to pick up a kennel, collar, water/food bowls, and a chew toy for Barkley. We brought Barkley inside with us since it was a pet friendly store :) We quickly learned that Barkley loves to be held and cuddled. He was so snuggly. 

When we got home, we set up his kennel and it was time for everyone to go to bed. For his first night,  Barkley did pretty well. He barked and whined until about midnight but then he seemed to settle down for the night. He did better and better each night and seemed to adjust to being the newest member of our family. His first month with us was pretty much spent doing what a newborn does...sleeping. 

 

Eli and Barkley have really bonded. Barkley LOVES Eli with a capital L. His favorite thing is to play with Eli around the house. Since Eli has never had a puppy before he's had to learn that playing with a puppy is a lot different than playing with an adult dog. Barkley jumps and chews and treats Eli like he's one of his litter mates. It's cute to watch but we've been telling Eli he better learn to be tough with Barkley now or he's going to run all over him when he gets bigger :)

 



After we lost Maggie, Eli drew a picture of a dog he was going to get in the future. He decided that August 31, 2015 sounded like a good day to get a new dog. After we got Barkley, Eli went to the wall where I had displayed his picture, took it down, and changed the date to the day Barkley joined our family. I thought it was the sweetest thing ever!

 



 

Stay tuned for more pictures of our newest family member. He's already proving to be full of spunk and personality :)