Bringing Home Yogi

After Roy passed away, Jason and I knew that we would adopt another lab.  We weren’t sure as to the when and decided we would let the decision happen naturally.  Sometime after Roy’s death one of my friends alerted me to the DFW Lab Rescue Society and the arrival of a couple litters of puppies.  The puppies were not available yet, and likely wouldn’t be for several weeks.  She knew that we were still grieving over the loss of Roy, but suggested that if we were even the tiniest bit interested we should start the application process because it was fairly long.

That night Jason and I talked over the decision.  It was much sooner than we expected, but it seemed like the golden opportunity.  And even if we weren’t ready when the puppies came available, we could always decide to adopt later.

And then we took a peek at the soon to be available puppies.  Is there anything cuter than a puppy?  I’m pretty sure I melted about a dozen times looking at those darling little faces.  But Jason…he picked out one instantly.  He pointed to a picture of a fuzzy chocolate boy.  That’s the dog I want.  The sweet boy was dropped off at a local pound along with his brothers and sisters.  The shelter has a 5-day policy and the little guys were scheduled to be euthanized the day they were saved by the DFW Lab Rescue Society.  All of the puppies came down with Parvo and were patiently and loving nursed back to health by their foster family. 

So we started the application process.  It was long.  There was an extensive application, then they review your application, contact your vet, and decide whether or not you pass phase one.  Then there’s a home-study to determine whether or not your home is suitable for a lab.  Then they re-review everything and decide whether you receive approval to adopt.  And after all of that you’ll only get to adopt a lab if the foster family approves you.  The lady who did our home study kind of scared us, because she told us that the competition for puppies was always high.  The application process went fairly quickly for us and were approved to adopt a new lab about a week before the puppies became available.

We finally met the little chocolate lab on Thursday.  He ran around the corner and immediately ran up to me.  It was love at first sight.  We were both head over heels for the little guy.  His foster family had a meeting schedule for all of the puppies at a Petco on Saturday and told us she’d let us know of her decision by Sunday.  I was busting at the seams to know if they’d choose us…so I did a little puppy stalking and drove over to see him.  It was a good thing I did, because the foster mom let me know that she’d picked us to adopt him and that I could take him home later that day!  And when I got out of the car to pick him up, he came bounding up to me and buried my face in kisses.  His foster mom said she knew then that she’d made the right choice.

Poor quality, but yes, that's me laying with him in the kennel. 

 We decided to name him Yogi Berra (continuing our baseball theme and because he looks like a little bear).  He’s only been with us a couple of days, but he has integrated wonderfully into our family.  He is the calmest, sweetest, and most content puppy I have ever met.  Everyone is shocked with how well behaved he is for only 4 ½ months. 

Losing Roy was hard and always will be.  But when I look at this last picture, I know in my heart that life unfolds the ways its meant to, both the triumphs and the challenges.  We prevented Roy from dying alone in that shelter.  We made the last 6 months of his life the very best that we could.  And now we have a new little guy and have the chance to provide him the very best home that we can.  I know that Roy is smiling down and proud of us for adopting another “death row pardonee.”

Welcome Home, Yogi Berra

Gifts for the Pups and Christmas Wrapping 2011

 And because we can't forget the furry friends in your life, today we have homemade dog treats.

I pretty much followed the recipe here.  It makes a pretty big batch of dog treats, but I needed to make 2 batches to feed the large number of labs (5) in my life.  I used the gingerbread men for the big dogs and a variety of small Christmas cutouts for the smaller dogs. 

A couple tips, use the lowest sodium you can for all of the ingredients.  Salt isn't great for dogs.  I found some random brand of peanut butter that didn't contain any sodium or sugar.  You're going to blow the salt count on the beef stock and the beef bouillon granules, but try to find the lowest sodium brands you can.  The Swanson brand of beef stock had over 4x the amount of sodium than the brand I ended up buying.

Morale: read the label!

Also, I used demerara sugar (aka Sugar in the Raw) instead of processed white sugar.  I figured natural is always better.

And no Christmas gift is complete without cute packaging!  I found these awesome labels at Creature Comforts (one of  my favorite blogs) and knew they'd be perfect.  I added my own wording and then printed them out on white card stock.  A white paper bag and a raffia bow and they're all set to go!

And finally, if you've been following this blog since last year, you know how much I love Christmas wrapping.  I scheme for a good couple of months about how I want to wrap my gifts.  And although I've used brown craft paper for the last 3 years (I'm not sure I'll ever use anything else), I keep finding little ways to change it up.

This year I attached a silver ribbon to each box.

 Then I created a darker silver tag that reads, "Merry Christmas.  Love, Jason and Summer".

In the center of each tag is a white clay medallion that has Merry Christmas and the person's named stamped onto it.  They're kind of hard to read in the photos, but they are darling in person.

This may be my favorite wrapping scheme ever.