1st Pictures at Home

Slideshow of pictures from Friday and Saturday (10/26-10/27):

Welcome Home, Lola - Day 1

We've had almost 48 hours with our new baby, Lola. She is the smartest, most darling puppy ever. (Of course she is, right?) She started off as a big-time sleeper, but she's beginning to find her puppy-energy supply. It's amazing the effect a single tennis ball can have on a puppy. The yellow florescent fuzz must be the universal signal for "freak out play!"

I know, it's time for a picture:









The Pickup

Sally, our breeder, called us at 11am on Friday to tell us that the Indiana crew, who had first choice female, had arrived earlier than noon and were already finished. So, we jumped in the car and headed from Oshkosh to Plainfield - excited and anxious, passing a few slow moving cars on the two-lane highway.

We gassed-up, peed and went to the feed store. This is where the bad news starts. Per one of Erica's nervous dreams, they were out of DJ's All Gold - the food the pups had been eating. We got Canidae, which is a really good food, but the experience was enough to worry that our little Lola, whomever she might be, wouldn't eat! At least the lady at the feed store was sweet and talkative, keeping us from rushing the block to the breeders.

When we got to the breeders, our knees were weak with anticipation and excitement. Sally had all the puppies out in the yard sniffing around and playing with each other, peeking their heads up to see who was coming. Was our first choice there?

We had visited two weeks earlier to watch and play and ended up picking our first two choices, a beautiful silver and a great little gray. It was very difficult to pick of course, but we both fell in love with the silver and she warmed up to is - likely literally, as it was chilly that Saturday. Sally painted her toenail and told us that, in her experience, no one had ever chosen someone else's pick.

She had bad news: the Indianans had picked our silver, even though they didn't like the blue eyes of the Weims (don't ask...) and the silvers have bluer eyes. While we told ourselves that this was a distinct possibility, we were still a little heartbroken. We'd agreed to seriously consider the other silver as a contingency and our second choice had needed an umbilical hernia operation, which made me feel really sad for her. She had little stitches and its a somewhat frequent occurrence in Weims, but I still felt guilty that we weren't automatically taking her home.

But the other silver looked so much like our first choice - identical, really - and she sat nicely and sniffed our hands and was very comfortable being held. Well, Erica and I looked at each other and knew we wanted a silver. We told Sally we'd take the other silver and she said that they usually went first.

As Sally was showing me all the paperwork, Erica was holding Lola. Sally gasped and sais, Oh my God. She told us to look at the pup's nail. It was painted pink. The Indiana crew had grabbed the other silver, perhaps by mistake. Either way, we were out of there fast, with huge smiles on everyone's faces. I don't subscribe to fate, but let's just say I'm glad this one worked out.

The Ride Home

Our puppy isn't actually narcoleptic, but she could play one on TV. Besides a bit of fearful whimpering and crying very early on (especially when she looked out the side window), our little Lola slept nearly the entire way home. We made the Plainfield-to-Kenosha drive in about two-and-one-half hours. We played the potty stops by ear, but she didn't whine and we didn't want to wake her or traumatize her with a new environment if we didn't have to. This leads us to believe we have the best puppy ever. (Who doesn't, right?)

We got her home and introduced her to the family room for a few minutes, letting her sniff and stay close to mommy and daddy. The we carried her outside - who knew crossing thresholds could be so challenging? Being the genius puppy she is, she peed and pooped outside after a bit of encouraging.

Then, back inside to find her new Canidae, which she ate voraciously. We had a great evening together, playing with a few toys and napping lots of napping. Another reason Lola's a genius: she crawled into her little den without much encouraging and made herself a soft little napping spot. Lots of praise for our little baby! Two little pee accidents, one while I was coaxing her outside to pee, the other after we introduced her to our bedroom (a new room!) and were trying to coax her out to follow us. What a puppy!

Our little napper only resisted her sleeping crate in our bedroom a little bit before she crawled in to much praise and some petting. She only whined for two 90-second stretches about fifteen minutes and half-an-hour into her bedtime. She slept from midnight until 630 straight with no accidents. What a little champion!

8 days

Erica and I have only eight days until we pick up our newly adopted Weim pup, Lola. I think we're burrying our anxious anticipation with loads of chores this weekend. We're also making the home a safer place for our puppy, I guess.

Do check out the previous pictures of our cutie. Hopefully more to come this weekend, if I can find a computer in between mowing, mulching, sweeping, scrubbing, and the other 132 items on the neat list. Oh, and going to hang out with Nick Hornby and 87 of his closest friends. And finishing editing the Fall 2007 cream city review. And reading some modernist theory.

Pictures?