Meet Lacey!
 

I resisted as hard as I could, but I knew it was inevitable, and it happened Monday, June 24 - we brought home a puppy. It's a long story but I'm too tired to go into details today.

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Her name is Lacey. She is a pure bred Cocker Spaniel. She doesn't have a middle name now, but Vicki is working on one for her (she always does).

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She is so curious about the outside I suspect she's never been allowed to go out and roam. It's such a joy to see her so happy, exploring and sniffing everything.

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Next to me ;) her best friend is Lamb Chop.

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We got home with her about 6:00 PM and the first thing she did was check out the cats. Most of them are so mellow they just shrugged her off, but Tuxedo Kat is a bit possessive of his place in the pecking order and wanted nothing to do with her.

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I'm keeping a log of how she is developing. I'm primarily trying to get a handle on how long she can go between potty breaks and how well she tolerates the crate for house training purposes. So far so good, but she got me up at 1:00 AM to go out (as expected) and I couldn't get back to sleep. Vicki slept right through it. I've been functioning on 2 hours of sleep today, but too excited about Lacey to care.

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She took a nap with her new mom this morning. It's just what Vicki wanted. Lucky Mom.

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She was 6.6 pounds last Wednesday at her vet check. I weighed her this morning and she was up to 7.1.

We went to the shelter a couple of times to see what was available as a rescue, but they never had anything that met our size and age preferences.

Cute Pup!

Cocker Spaniels are great dogs.

What a cutie .... she'll have you both trained in no time flat :)!

Won't get too large, excellent

Awesome! Guard your shoes, every cocker I've run into is a chewer!

Fantastic. Just spent all morning at the vet with my pup. He is yelping in pain. No diagnosis. Dogs truly are our best friends.

Thank you for posting the beginning of your story with Lacey. It helps offset the Monday we had with our little one. I love it when critters get to enjoy the good life.

Best
Les

Congratulations on bringing Lacey into your home. She is a cutie. I always look to how people treat children and animals in evaluating character.

She's a really cute pup.

She's so cute! Wait til she reaches dog teenager years. Then she's gonna ignore you, not listen...

Life without a dog is not worth living.

Congrats on the pup ....... very cute .

Lacey rocks. Wanna trade for a cat ? Neighbor has 17, would not miss one.

Cute Dawg... All the best :)

Beautiful dog - I hope you have many wonderful years together!

Absolutely AWESOME, Patrick!!! I'm so happy for you guys. I know you've had a rough stretch on the dog front, but there is no better way for a dog owner to get back on their feet than to get someone with four. I figured it was a matter of time. Lacey just won the doggie lotto! Congrats to all of you!

So cute!!

Congrats Pat!

.

Well, it's 3:30 AM. At 1:00 Lacey started fussing in her crate so I took her out to pee and poop. Let her play for 1/2 an hour and put her back in the crate. Now ahe and Vicki are sound asleep and I've been awake since 1:00. Lacey will need to go out again within the next hour, so no sense trying to sleep. So here I am.

I wanted to wait to get a dog if we ever got another one. I knew no other dog would ever be like my Maddie, and frankly I was enjoying the freedom of not having the responsibility of a dog.
Vicki was miserable. For her, life is as Greg said, "Life without a dog is not worth living." The episode with the cat and losing it just made it worse for her. We looked at shelters with no luck finding the puppy we wanted. She rescued a Cocker Spaniel many years ago and she thought she wanted to find another one. She looked at breeders, but I didn't want to buy from a puppy mill. It just encourages them.
Then I came across an Amish family that had two Cocker Spaniel females that they breed once a year. It seemed like a good compromise. On her birthday I told Vicki I had found a puppy I liked and if she liked her too we could go get her. That was Lacey, and Vicki was in love the minute she saw her picture. Monday we drove up to the land of horse-drawn carriages and picked her up; an 8 hour round trip that exhausted me physically and emotionally. I had a lot of time to think, hoping I did the right thing.
I see so much of Maddie's behavior in Lacey. She reminds me of Maddie when she was a puppy several times a day. I didn't think I would ever have another dog like my Maddie, I loved that dog so much. Now this little girl is stealing my heart. It feels like a betrayal, but also makes me miss Maddie even more.
Also, I remember how horrible it was to be with Maddie through her sickness and death, and now I know I'll go through that all again some day. It's inevitable.
Being up all night is not good for your mental health.

OK, end of midnight ramblings. Time for a cup of coffee and wait for Lacy to start rattling her cr

Hello Lacey. How do you do. My name is Houndred. Welcome to the world of being a dog and living with cats. They are a bit like women. You play make pretend and let them believe they are the boss.

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"NO REGERTS"

Go ahead and get that tattoo Patrick ;)