Our new family member

So this is Cocoa, the newest addition to our family. Cocoa is a lab mix, and not very big (around 30 pounds right now.) She is 6 months old, and loves to snuggle. She come house and crate trained (a huge bonus.)

We got Cocoa from my wife's high school friend. We got her for a few reasons. One is that our daughters have been begging for a dog, the other was to see if an animal companion would help our autistic son.

Our kids didn't know we were getting a dog, in fact my wife had the older kids baby sit while she came to pick me up from the train station. While she was out, we went and got the dog. Upon arriving home, we found our youngest crying, and the girls playing in the yard. The girls got excited and ran to see the dog, while the youngest just kept crying. The dog was interested in the youngest, which seems typical, and gave him one lick, then walked off. This helped calm our son down, and was the best thing the dog could have done. If she had acted all hyper and jumped around, he never would have paid attention to her again. The oldest had a friend over, and I think all he said was, "cool". This was mainly to stress how cool and collected he was. He wouldn't get over excited over anything with a friend around.

After we got everyone inside, the dog started exploring. Now the youngest is slow coming up the stairs, mainly because he likes to play on them (that should really say try to stand on his head on them, but that sounds dangerous so we'll leave it at play.) The dog walked down the stairs towards the youngest, and again just gave him one lick. The youngest just looked at her for a second, then put his hand on her head and walked up. This is a huge success, as he has really only ever interacted with bigger dogs, and Cocoa is much smaller than I expected.

The youngest went into his room, and the dog continued to explore. Eventually she found the youngest's room, and he was laying on the floor. The dog just went in and watched him, while he watched her. Again, looking at animals is not something the youngest always does, so this is good.

We took the dog out to visit, as our way of announcing that we have a new pooch. We saw my folks, and my wife's folks, then came home. We got everyone inside, and when the dog and the youngest reached the top of the stairs, the youngest just grabbed the dog's tail and followed her around. Major triumph. Cocoa handled it great, she just looked at him for a second and then went about her business.

The oldest finally showed some enthusiasm after his friend went home. The girls had been fighting over who got to walk the dog. He finally asked if he could have a turn as we were going into our house the last time at night.

I woke up this morning, and got out of bed. The dog jumped up and greeted me with a big tail wag. You gotta love the unbridled joy a dog can communicate with it's rear end. The dog then dashed out of the room, and jumped on my youngest daughter's bed. He gave her a big lick, and she thought this was the greatest way to wake up ever.

The girls even fought over who got to take the dog out to go potty this morning. We'll see if that keeps up.

This means a few more weekend projects, like dog proofing the backyard again, but I love it.