We thrive with five!

We have added a new member to our family, and his name is Owen. Last night my husband and I drove to Greensboro to the Guilford County Animal Shelter and met Jordan. There were so many other dogs at this shelter, but he stood out from all the others.

Jordan was taken in by the shelter in July of 2008, but he is only 11 months old. He spent 8.5 months at the shelter, almost his entire life! The people that worked and volunteered at the shelter were so excited that he was going home with us. They had wonderful things to say about him, and we could not believe that he had not been adopted sooner.

We saw Jordan online this past weekend. We loved his look (he reminds us of Omie) and the way the shelter described his personality. The only reason he was not adopted is because he is shy and wary of new people. This did not bother us in the least as we could understand why the little guy might be afraid of new people after such a life.

So, we fell in love with him at first sight and brought him home. We both knew that he was not going to be "Jordan". The name just didn't fit him, but it took us over an hour to come up with the right name. I came up with Ripley, and really liked it, though it didn't seem perfect. We were tentatively calling him Riply and still trying to brainstorm for new names when Zach suggested Owen. I told him that I liked it, but that I wanted to think about it. It only took me about five minutes to realize that our new pup was completely Owen. There could not be a more perfect name. My husband pulled the name up from when we had to read A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving in an English class we shared. Owen Meany was a small, odd character, and it fit.

Owen's cute little profile.

The deer in the headlights look, and those ears! :)

He has stolen my heart.

Owen's ears are huge, and we love them. He is only 20 lbs, less than half of Omie's weight. When Omie went to the vet yesterday, she weighed in at 41 lbs. She was only 33 lbs when we adopted her. Somehow Penny has lost a pound since we adopted her, and is now 32.5 lbs. Owen is our new little peanut, but we plan to put some meat on his bones, he's just too skinny. He is almost Omie's personal "Mini Me".

Omie had never looked fat until now.

Our family count is now at seven - we two, and five furry kids!

Puppy problem - Solved.

We took Omie to the vet yesterday and found out that she had a slight urinary tract infection. She is now on antibiotics and is being let out in the middle of the night to relieve herself during this recovery period.

I am so glad that she is ok!

Puppy problem update

Thank goodness for coworkers that listen to your problems and offer suggestions!

I was talking about Omie's recent peeing problems with a group of coworkers that also have dogs, and they suggested that she might have a urinary tract infection. I would never have thought of that! We are off to the vet this afternoon.

I feel like such a bad mommy....

Puppy problems....

We are having issues with our pups. We generally have problems with Penny trying to escape and get away, and that has become second nature. We have started taking her on long walks each night so that she gets the chance to explore new things, an effort expended to curb her wanderlust. She has been a very good girl since her last escape event this past weekend. She got out an open window in the house (we had it open because it was so nice out), and was gone over night before someone called us in the morning to tell use where she ended up.

The problems of late have been with Omie. Omie is generally a very good dog. She doesn't try to get away, she has very good table manners - even when we eat in front of her, she does like to chase the kitties, but it's not that big of a problem. However, she has been peeing inside of the house every day for the last 5-6 days. We understand some of the accidents, because we know that she has a small bladder. We try to let her out twice as often for bathroom breaks as you would a normal dog her size, but very early this morning she completely astounded me - she peed in the middle of our bed.

Omie slept with us all night, curled up in the middle of bed at our feet. My alarm went off at 5:30, I got up to press snooze, and when I turn around, Omie was in my spot. I thought she was trying to snuggle with me, but when I tried to move her back to her spot, she wouldn't budge. She is never that hard to move. When I tried to physically pick her up and put her back, that's when I found out she had peed in the bed. I don't know why she would do that, in the exact place where she had slept all night. There was no clue that she even had to go. She didn't get excited about getting up, she simply stood up, peed, and then moved to my spot in the bed.

Sadly for us, and for Omie I'm sure, she has lost her bed privileges until we can trust her. I don't know what we're going to do about these peeing problems, but we need to figure it out. She's been so good until recently, why would she all of a sudden take giant leaps backward?

Busy day

It's a busy day at work, and I decided to veg out during lunch and just surf the net instead of doing my usual blog entry. I'm not sure if anyone reads this enough to miss a decent entry, but I like to imagine someone does.

If I could be somewhere else at the moment to wind down with my husband, I'd go back to our honeymoon destination, Harker's Island. Back to the moments pictured below.

Sunset through the sea grass.

Sunset with the octagon stilt cabins in the foreground.

I'm glad that I'm going on vacation this weekend. It will be a girls weekend as my husband has to work, but he doesn't mind, thank goodness. I love how much he tolerates my silly whims. He is a good man.

Proposal letter

I am a silly romantic. Since the day Zach proposed and put my beautiful ring on my finger, I have carried around the letter he used to propose to me in the box that he held out while on one knee. I don't know what he'll think about me sharing it, but I can't resist. I haven't told him about my blog, but I'm sure he's seen me working on it, though I try to keep it low key and hidden much of the time. I like thinking that I can write whatever I want to here without worrying who my audience will be.

Anyway, here is my proposal letter.

Courtney,

I love you. You are the most amazing woman that I know. Smart, caring, beautiful, loving, gracious, tender, selfless, fun, endearing and enduring. At one point I never thought the day would come when you would say I love you to me. It has come, and it is one of the highlights of my life. I wish I could go back and pinpoint the moment I fell in love with you. Although I don't know exactly, the feeling is so large I think I'm going to explode. Combining our lives is the next step. I am so excited and I have to ask....

(This is where he got down on one knee while I was sitting in the rocking chair on the front porch of his family home.)

Love,
Zach

My husband has always been a letter writer, well, at least to me. I really treasure that part of him, and love all the little notes and letters he has give me. He could not have chosen a better way to propose to me. It was essentially "him", and that is one of the reasons I love our engagement story so.

Still searching

I went and saw Lucky on Friday, and we talked about having him come to visit the girls. However, once we thought about how large he was (about 30 lbs heavier than the girls) and that he too is a bit of an escape artist, we decided to keep looking for our third canine family member.

There are so many adorable dogs when cruising through Petfinder.com, that it is hard to chose just one to focus on. We inquired by email about 4 different dogs, and even went to the Wake County Animal Shelter to look at a Border Collie mix puppy, but he was already adopted! We were very happy for him (he was absolutely adorable) but now we are having to decide who to go and visit next. We are currently looking at a Min Pin named Beau, a Rat Terrier name Sophie, a Border Collie mix named Jordan, and a Lab mix named Craig. We hope that one of them will be the perfect addition to our family.

Beau

Sophie

Jordan

Craig

We just have to be patient and see....