I know I promised this post over the weekend and I apologize. I really don’t have an excuse other than laziness… Ahem, without further adieu…

Pearson and I have been talking about adopting a dog for a long time. We always knew we wanted one within the first year of marriage. We were told to wait at least 6 months in order to get used to each other and to get our finances stable first. After 6 months we started talking about it and there was just always a reason to wait. I wanted to wait till it got warmer. Then we had to wait because we were going to be out of town a lot this summer. Every time we decided to go to the shelter, we realized something was coming up soon. We didn’t want to leave him or her overnight with someone right after the adoption.

Anyway, all this to say, this was a long time coming. We went to the shelter on Tuesday with our adoption application filled out and four dogs picked out to look at. You can go to www.franklincountydogs.com and see the dogs and their biographies ahead of time. Well, we were unable to see three of the four dogs we had picked out for different reasons. The one that was left, Pip, just happened to be the dog we already liked the best just from reading his online bio. We played with him and took him on a walk. He was so sweet. And he LOVED Pearson. He went right up to him and sat in his lap. This was big because honestly, out of the two of us, Pearson was less fond of the idea of getting a dog.

We put him on hold until the shelter could get a hold of our landlord to make sure he was OK to have in the apartment. We came back the next day to get him and bring him home! All three of us were ecstatic! He had the name “Pip” at the shelter and we decided to keep it. We had been talking about names for as long as we had been talking about adopting. We wanted to name our dog after someone or something out of a fantasy novel/movie, i.e. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek etc. We wanted something not obvious… Bella, short for Bellatrix Lestrange; Ruby, short for Rubeus Hagrid; Finn, short for Finnick Odair… Pippin, as in Peregrin Took from Lord of the Rings, was on our list. So it was perfect. We are keeping the name he is already used to, Pip, and making it short for a beloved character, Pippin.

Look at his cute little tongue!!

Pip has been incredible! We really got lucky. He was already house trained and crate trained. He doesn’t bark. He just doesn’t. Sometimes he whines but that is all the noise we ever hear. He doesn’t lick you all over [Pearson hates that]. He plays some but most of the time he just lays around. For instance, he basically lays on the bed beside my desk all day while I work. He is perfect for us.

The first couple nights he had a hard time going to bed in his crate at night. He would whimper and dig on the door trying to get out. We tried to ignore him as much as possible [we didn’t want to reinforce this behavior], but we finally had to go ‘yell’ at him to stop. We haven’t heard him since. He also wouldn’t eat very well at first, but I think we now have a routine down that works.

Anyway, Pip is a great dog! We love him and he loves us already. We are very blessed to have found him so easily. It is like it was meant to be. If you are looking to add a furry friend to your family, I recommend looking at your local shelter first. These dogs and cats need loving homes.

Thanks for reading!