Introducing.... DUPREE!

It's been way too long since we've posted... we didn't have much to update in the last couple of weeks, and you can guess how distracted we've been since last weekend! Thanks so much for the comments and suggestions for preparing for our puppy!

We welcomed Dupree last Sunday, and we are having so much fun with him. What a sweetheart!
So... here is what we've been up to. For a couple of weeks, Leah and I continued reading and re-reading our GDB manual and attending meetings. And asking tons of questions. And reading wonderful, informational blogs. And asking more questions. And buying toys and supplies. And getting more and more excited. We were down to the last two days, and heard that the puppy truck was delayed due to weather. ARG! We were so disappointed, but it turned out to be a good thing. The weather really wasn't safe to travel in. And we only had to wait one more day.

We arrived in Denver right on time, and listened to a great presentation about the history of GDB and a training demonstration. During lunch, we received an envelope with our "clue" for the puppy's name. The clue read: "You and me and your puppy." We quickly figured out that his name was Dupree (only because other people knew of the movie and told us- we had never heard of it).

We saw the puppy truck outside and knew that our puppy was inside, and it seemed to take forever for them to get the puppies ready.

Here is Leah waiting patiently for the puppies to be presented. And, I guess mom was a little exctied, too!

Finally Dupree was presented to Leah - the cutest puppy we've ever seen.

And the sleepiest. We were all walking around oooohing and ahhhhing over all of the puppies, and Dupree could barely keep his eyes open. We just can't get over how adorable he is. I've never known such a cuddly puppy - he absolutely loves to be held, and I love holding him. We make a great pair!

It was so much fun meeting other raisers in our region. Some people knew Dupree's mom and dad, and had great things to say about them. We even met his mom's raisers. We have such a great club - we're meeting so many wonderful people.

He slept all the way home, just as we expected. When we got home, we carefully introduced our pet dog, Clyde, to Dupree. Clyde, our 5-year-old Bernese Mountain Dog (our gentle giant) didn't take too kindly to Dupree. He was actually scared of him. Well, we'll need to work on that.

The first night was a breeze... he slept from 10:30 to 6:00. I was amazed, but I also didn't expect this to be the norm. And I was right. The next night, he barely slept at all. He spent most of the night crying. I was expecting something in the middle. The last two nights were pretty good - only needed to go out once, at about midnight, and was mostly quiet the until 6:00. I can handle that.

House training is our main focus right now. He hasn't had many accidents, because we take him out so often. We're teaching him to go on pavement so we don't have that battle later on, but he definitely prefers grass.

In general, Dupree is a very calm, sleepy, mellow puppy. He's not very playful - he tends to just plop down when we try to get him to play a little. I'm thinking it's just his young age, and he'll perk up soon. I'm in no hurry, though. I'm really enjoying this quiet, easy phase.

Our biggest challenge right now (and it hasn't been too bad) is trying to do my stay-at-home mom thing when I can't really take him anywhere. Picking up and dropping off kids at school and their extra-curricular activities takes up much of my time, as well as volunteering at school. So far, I've been able to handle it all without having to do much crate time, and I'm hoping it'll continue to work itself out.

Fortunately, there isn't a lot of school left, and Leah will be home full-time to help out. And we'll also be able to take him more places. In the meantime, I'm going to try to cut back on some of my committments and stay home more.

Off to bed... hopefully, Dupree can skip the midnight relieving session!

Lynette