Meet Shadow, the BIG Dog

Having a dog can be rewarding and and sometimes challenging, with house-training, cat-chasing, digging, etc. Don't get me wrong, we love our dog, but having a BIG DOG sometimes can be a LOT more challenging than rewarding!

We got Shadow about 3 years ago from the local Humane Society. Since we are not snobby about our pets, we always get them from the pound, because we figure if we can do the community a favor by saving unwanted pets, we might as well. We usually don't look for any particular breed or gender, just one that is even-tempered and friendly. We have kids, so we try not to get pets that could be dangerous. A Pit Bull, for example, would not be a good choice for us. I know people who have, and love, their Pit Bulls, but we aren't willing to take that chance.

So, we go to the Humane Society to look for a new dog. We had another dog, Sammy (Samuel Adams was his full name - I like my beer, what can I say?), who was a small mutt, and we thought we would look for maybe a medium-sized dog to be his companion. He was getting kind of grumpy in his old age, and we thought this would give him someone to play with (This turned out to be a terrible idea, as I will tell you in a future post).

They had quite a few full-grown dogs there, which is always kind of sad, because people usually just want puppies or kittens when they come to the Humane Society. We wanted a puppy as well. Like I said before, we didn't want any dog that might already have a temperament problem. Keeping the kids' focus on track in the pound is also kind of challenging, as you might imagine. "Awwwwww, look at the cute little kitties. Can we have one?". That was a phrase heard several times during our visit.

And then we saw him. A small black and white puppy that was whimpering and acting "oh so cute". The kids put their hands up to the cage, and he immediately started licking them. I knew then that he was our dog. We found out from one of the employees that he was the last (and smallest) of a litter of 5 puppies that were dropped off. We looked at his information card. It said that his name was Duke, that he was a German Shepard mix, he was house-trained, had his shots, and would grow to be a medium-sized dog. Yeah, right. If you look at the pics on the blog header, you will see a puppy picture on the left, and a full-grown picture on the right. That is a 4 ft. high fence!

Well the kids didn't really like the name Duke, so we decided to change his name. Our daughter wanted to name him Shadow, and our son wanted to name him Record. Record? Yeah, Record. As in, the things that CD's replaced. OK, so now we have an argument on our hands. As anyone who has children knows, 2 siblings will never agree on anything. Sometimes I think we should have another child, just to act as a tie-breaker. So we decided to use Shadow as his first name, and Record as his middle name. Shadow Record. That's our dog!