At first I was very set on the fact that I would not get a dog until after we had kids. Well, it didn't take long for Dave to talk me into getting one sooner, compromising to wait until Summer 2013 when we are done with school and can go on a long luxurious vacation without having to find someone to take care of it. After holding back for as long as I did, it actually started to seem like a pretty good idea. Plus I would have a future jogging buddy for those mornings when Dave just won't get out of bed.
Being the planner that I am, and having a killer day of boredom at the shack, I started looking for breeders online since sometimes you have to reserve a puppy pretty far in advance. (I think you can guess where this is going.) We were set on a golden retriever. My dog growing up was a golden retriever named Riley and I LOVED him. Dave's uncle has always had golden retrievers, so he really likes the breed too. AND we had to get a big dog. That was my other "rule". A golden wasn't hard to agree on at all. So...while searching I found a few possibilities for breeders to come back to in the future, but the puppies were a bit more expensive than we were expecting. So I decided to kill my curiosity and look at the KSL classifieds to check out price ranges. While on there found the PERFECT litter of puppies! They were just the color we wanted (dark), very close by (Provo), and the puppies were adorable! The catch: They were available for pickup at the end of June 2012, instead of June 2013 :). I'd really done it now.
We called the number and planned on going to see the puppies to make sure we really wanted one right now. Well duh! If you go look at them, you're going to get one. So let me rephrase that: We planned on going to see the puppies to pick one out. There were 11 in the litter, and we fell in love with the "green" puppy right away. This cute little guy:
The day we picked him out. 3 weeks old.
(He won us over by licking my face and falling asleep on Dave's lap.)
We had to wait 6 long weeks (until he was 9 weeks old) and finally picked him up on our way home from Lake Powell at the end of June. We named him Oakley (after my favorite place on earth!)
*Fun & irrelevant fact: He was born a day before our second anniversary.
We picked a good one! He's such an awesome puppy, is fun to play with, has a mellow personality, and learns fast...Although sometimes I feel like we have a child. (Especially for the first couple of weeks when we had to take him out multiple times during the night.) He's been a blast, and I'm glad I decided to cave! We own a puppy!!!
