Meet Red.
Striped Collar
Isn’t he the cutest?
You’ve probably already seen my posts of him on Instagram but we got a dog. Yeah, I can’t believe it either.
For years, I’ve been adamant about not getting a dog. Reese has pestered me about it since she uttered her first word, “puppy.” The poor girl has had a puppy cake for almost every birthday and last year at Christmas told Santa, “No more stuffed puppies, I want a real one this year.” I’ve told Reese ‘no’ so many times, I sounded like a broken record.
“I don’t need another thing to take care of or clean up after,” was my mantra whenever anyone over the age of eight asked if we would ever get a dog.
Basically this was me.
Then corona happened.
All bets were off. Down was up and up was down. Times had changed and we were stuck inside. The kids were (and still are) driving me crazy. And everyone said, “it’s the best time to get a dog.” I blame all the news stories for seeping into my subconscious.
Not sure how it all started but on one of the endless cold, rainy days in March I broke. For some reason, I googled dogs and then it was all over. I went down a rabbit hole searching. The Humane Society here didn’t have a single pup to even consider adopting so I started hunting for some variation of a doodle. Something that wouldn’t shed a ton (been there done that with our previous pups), something good with kids and one that was available QUICK. We decided that if we were getting a dog, we couldn’t wait six weeks or more. We needed to get it with enough time to use as much quarantine as possible training the little guy or gal.
My business partner Lynsey has the cutest, sweetest mini golden doodle, so I started with their breeder. Nothing for six months. Boo.
Randomly someone told me about this facebook group, Kentucky Doodles and Poodles. If you’re in this area and looking for a dog, this is the group. All the dog people are posting up a storm in here. Things move fast, so you need to be ready once you join the group.
After some digging, I stumbled upon this little guy. Him and his sister were the last two available from a litter of Golden Bernadoodles, which is a mix of a Golden Doodle and a Bernadoodle. Basically a fancy mutt. But after seeing his sweet face, we were sold. We had a couple local friends who had dogs from the same breeder – Happy Doodle Farm – which was reassuring so on a total whim, I put the deposit down and made plans to pick him up in Bardstown.
The rest is history.
When we got him Reese said “all my dreams have finally come true,” like some Disney princess getting her fairy tale ending. It hasn’t been all rainbows and unicorns but he’s been such a good addition to our crew. He definitely is still in need of some training but we’re getting there.
His daily routine is teaching the kids about responsibilities and taking care of something other than themselves.
More importantly, his snuggles and sweet face are giving us a much needed dose of joy. Plus, he’s become my go-to walking buddy (if you saw yesterday’s post, you know how much walking I’m doing these days).
My favorite part of the whole thing has been the messages from fellow quarantine adopters with pics of their puppies. Clearly I’m not the only one who went a little nutty and lost their willpower when looking at all those cute, smooshy faces.
I’ll end this with a shameless plug for D3’s latest corona project, Red’s instagram page. I swore I wouldn’t make one but D3 asked if he could and while it’s a little silly, it makes him happy and occupies time, so I figured what’s the harm (I monitor all the comments/posts/DMs so we’re good there). If you want to support his goal of getting 150 followers, you can follow Red_the_Dog for all the pup content.
Photos by Avistoria – McKenzie Compton
Red's Favorites
We got our Pyrenees-Lab mix in October, and honestly, it’s been great to have Bob at home to help with walks as Harry has entered the super-awkward months of being a giant puppy. (No, seriously, he’s 8 months old and about the right size to jockey in the Derby!) Having the extra help from Bob has been a life-saver.
The Quarantine crazies may have set in over here, though… we’ve found ourselves discussing a third dog. ????