Annie

We had been waiting so long to get another dog... Our sweet Ivy died when Max was 6 months old, so to be precise it has been almost 9 years!! We were so ecstatic to find an awesome breeder north of Seattle, and a huge litter of puppies to choose from. We took our time choosing the perfect one, and came home just before Halloween with our ANNIE. She was the sweetest and cutest puppy ever, and quick to learn new things like "scoot" and "poop over there in the bark" and "sleep through the night" and many other basic commands.

Along with these awesome moments however, we also discovered one shocking day that she had something very wrong with her. In the following weeks, she had multiple seizures, and we spent many hours agonizing with the vet and our breeder about what her future held. In the end, we knew we needed a healthy family dog (after all this waiting, we were just not prepared to have a high needs dog in the mix of our busy family). So, we made the hard decision to bring her back home to her mommy, and thankfully our amazing breeder had one of Annie's sisters still available from their litter to give us (more on her later)...  The week leading up to our "goodbye" to Annie was so, so hard. It was the week before Thanksgiving, and we hosted several overnight visitors in the midst of our difficult decision making. Maddie and I probably cried for 27 hours total that week. It was traumatic, but I knew we had better days ahead. The day we returned Annie, Max and I drove north and met our breeder halfway (another huge blessing on a holiday traffic weekend) and kissed our baby girl goodbye.

The awesome news is that in the month since they have had her back, she has been utterly happy to be back with her dog pack, and they have even found her a new forever home with a man prepared to care for her needs. All's well that ends well. Farewell to our sweet girl. It shocks me how much we came to love you in just one short month! Dogs are special.