Happy Friday, everyone! As promised, here is a fuller in-depth blog post going into the story of Daisy and how we ended up bringing her home.

the context

As everyone knows, we already have a dog named Kylo at home. Kylo is an F1B mini Bernedoodle and we brought him home two weeks before the first pandemic lockdowns in 2020. But what you might NOT know is that before Kylo, J & I owned the sweetest, best Goldendoodle ever named Spartan. He was our first “baby”, gifted to us when we were newlyweds; he was there throughout the birth of every kid of ours and was so, so , so gentle. He died unexpectedly in 2019 (as in, he died right in the middle of my kids’ playroom without any warning or illness, with my kids watching TV right next to him – we still don’t really know what happened but he started vomiting and my kids started yelling and by the time I made it over to him he was gone). Kylo was meant to be Spartan version 2.0 … I never thought that we’d end up with a dog with so many behavioral issues when we got Kylo. Now that Kylo is almost two, he’s really well managed and trained but he’s also … not Spartan. He’s not gentle. He’s not cuddly. He’s… him. 😂And that’s not his fault, that’s just the doggo he is and I can’t change his personality.

the when

When we were in the thick of our issues with Kylo (about a year ago, actually!) I had a “Come to Jesus” sit down conversation with J about what we were going to do with him. The options were either pay for an expensive board & train with a professional who really knew what they were talking about or rehome him. I wanted to rehome Kylo. LIKE, REAL BADLY. J said no … and we all know how that ended. I remember when we were having that conversation, I sort of threw out out “Fine then but just know that we will end up having a second dog at some point because KYLO IS NOT IT OK?” at Hubby. I don’t even think I really meant it in the moment but I know I said it and J looked at me like I was crazy. And it’s one of those things where if you’re thinking about doing something, you all of a sudden see it everywhere? Like if you’re contemplating buying a green car, all of a sudden all you notice is green cars everywhere? The same thing happened. I sort of threw out this crazy half-formed idea that I wasn’t even fully on board with myself but suddenly I started seeing families with two dogs all over my neighborhood. ALL OVER! Several of our neighbors on our VERY BLOCK own two dogs!

the why

So obviously, one of the main questions I get asked is – WHY? Why get a second dog? What, your three kids and one existing dog aren’t enough to keep you busy!?

There were a few reasons why I was interested in having a second dog but here they are in no particular order:

• Like I said, Kylo (while awesomely trained now) is not the dog that I thought we were getting. He’s a great dog but not a great family companion and I still wanted what we had with Spartan in a family dog. My kids are kind of scared of Kylo … he’s not really cuddly … and I wanted a dog that would just lay at my feet during the day which Kylo is not.
• We don’t believe in dog parks (trainers say that it’s the literal worst place you can take your pet) so Kylo doesn’t have much opportunity to socialize with other dogs. I kind of wanted a friend for Kylo to play with and keep him busy.
• J was actually not completely opposed to getting a second dog but he wanted to do it YEARS from now, when Kylo was old and close to dying. I told J that if we’re going to get a second dog at all, I’d rather just do it now while I remember all the puppy stuff from Kylo still. Potty training and night training Kylo was tough because it had been almost a decade since we’d had a puppy and I’d forgotten EVERYTHING. Literally, everything. I didn’t want to do that again. It’s kind of like when parents decide to just have kids super close together and get all the diaper years out of the way at once? It’s hard for the first year or so but after that it’s smooth sailing? Yea.

the how

So after a few months went by and the idea solidified more in my mind, I happened to be at one of D’s soccer practices and saw the sweeeeeetest Goldendoodle there. She actually came up to me while I was sitting and watching practice and nudged me with her head like Spartan used to do for a pet. Then she wouldn’t move away from me even though her owner kept scolding her to leave me alone. THIS was the the sweet, snuggly, cuddly dog that I was envisioning to add to our family! I talked to the owner and got her breeder info and tucked it into a back corner of my memory for safe keeping.

I knew that the first thing I had to do was get J 100% on board if this was something I really wanted to do so I decided to bring it up with him again but this time with the list of reasons that I outlined above. He agreed with my reasoning but also said … okay, then maybe in five years? I think he was just really scarred and exhausted from Kylo and didn’t want to start at square one with a new dog again. Which… fair enough.

During all this, I also started planting the idea in my kids’ heads to get their thoughts – like, hey? What do you guys thinking about getting a second dog, like a friend for Kylo? What color would you want? How big? A boy or girl? They of course were super on board and adamant that they wanted a “sister dog” for Kylo (LOL) and they wanted a white one that looked kind of like Spartan used to. They even picked a name – Daisy!

I waited a couple more months before opening the conversation with J again and this time reallllly laid on my vision and reasoning for why NOW would be good timing for a second dog if we were open to getting one in the future. He came around and agreed but this time said ok … then maybe in 2022? I was totally on board with that but knowing that puppies are in high demand because of COVID, told him that I wanted to start vetting breeders (including the one that I had in my back pocket from the soccer family) now and get on any potential wait lists now in case any of them are longer than 6 months. He said that was cool and to go ahead and do that. This was early October of this year.

I called the soccer family breeder first because I knew from meeting one of her other dogs that she bred pets that had the temperament we wanted. I clicked with her RIGHT AWAY! She was awesome! We talked for over an hour on the phone about her dogs, any litters she currently was planning for, puppies she had, etc. THEN she told me that one of her medium F1 Goldendoodle litters just had TEN puppies (huge litter) and she actually had three puppies still left if we wanted one in the next few months. She’s a smaller breeder (not one that has litter after litter on a rolling basis and takes wait list deposits months in advance) so the next time she was planning on breeding this same medium size Goldendoodle litter would be Fall of 2022. So we could either do this now, or do this a year from now. For me, I didn’t really see the benefit of waiting – let’s just get the hard part over with, you know? I knew that I had to sit J down and have another big conversation with him 😂I texted him to come in from his office and explained the situation, we both decided to sleep on it and the next day bit the bullet and put our puppy deposit in. Honestly, convincing J was NOT hard. It’s not like I had to pull teeth to get him to agree to do this. He loves dogs maayyyybe more than I do 💀

the uh oh

So, we had our deposit in, we were going to be number 8 on the list and since we knew we wanted a girl puppy, we would be able to pick from the two remaining girls left (there were two girls and one boy left from the litter but we knew we wanted a girl). The breeder was fantastic and super communicative … until she wasn’t. I stopped hearing from her at all after a few days. I figured she was busy since there were ten puppies and that meant ten families that would be contacting her and asking questions. I already knew our puppy pick-up date and had gotten some preliminary information from her so while I thought the lack of communication was strange, I wasn’t too worried.

Then, the week that we were supposed to pick up our puppy came and I still had not heard final details, like the exact address or time slot for our puppy pick up. I texted her on a Tuesday asking for that information and letting her know we were super excited. I didn’t get a response from her for hours ….

.. until she called me at about 9pm that night with a really heavy voice and told me that she had screwed up. She had mixed us up with another family that had the same last name and same area code phone number and because of that, she would not have a puppy for us to pick up that weekend. I was honestly so shocked; it was the last thing I ever anticipated would happen! To her credit, she was super apologetic and embarrassed and offered me the best she could to make things right – breeder’s choice pick (aka first pick) for the next litter of puppies which had just been born a few days prior and would be ready to take home in Jan. The Jan litter was actually a littler of mini Goldendoodles which are more expensive but obviously she would honor the price that we would have paid for a medium Goldendoodle. She also, of course, offered a full refund on our deposit if that’s what we wanted instead and basically told me the ball was in my court – what did I want to do? Whatever I wanted, she would try to make it happen. She even had a friend who is also a breeder who she frantically contacted and arranged for us to have one of THAT breeder’s immediately available puppies but that breeder only had boys left and we really wanted a girl.

So … with a big breath of grace, I told her it was ok. That it was an honest mistake and it happens to all of us and I appreciate her trying her best to make things right after realizing the mix up. I told her J & I would talk about it and get back to her with what we wanted to do .. and then I hung up the phone and was honestly heartbroken. We hadn’t told the kids anything yet but I had secretly been preparing for over a month to bring this puppy home. I had a Christmas stocking ready, I had a customized ornament that said “Daisy’s First Christmas 2021”, I had little Christmas gifts for her … LOL. I was super disappointed, how could I not be!?

J & I decided that this must be God’s kindness to us in some way – maybe a puppy from the next litter would be a better fit for our family? Maybe it’s a blessing that we’d get to enjoy the holiday season without the chaos of a puppy? I called the breeder back and agreed to take first pick for the Jan litter and thought that was that. I was still a little bummed because Kylo is a mini so I really wanted a bigger doodle that would be closer to what we had with Spartan but I was making lemonade out of lemons, you know?

the unexpected

THEN.

Then the really unexpected happened 😂

Two days later, on Thursday afternoon, I got ANOTHER call from the breeder. The number three pick for the original litter we were on had to back out due to a family emergency and there was now a spot open again. Normally if someone backs out, everyone on the list after that person would just get bumped up on – like 4th would become 3rd, 5th would become 4th, etc. But because of the circumstances and the mistake the breeder had made with us, she called us first and offered us the 3rd pick before contacting the other families on the list to bump them up. Being third pick would mean that we would have five girl puppies to choose from (versus just two that we would have had if none of this had ever happened) and it also bumped up our puppy take-home day from Sunday 11/14 to Sat 11/13. Remember, I am getting this phone call late Thursday afternoon and the breeder is about 4 hours away so we had planned to go the day before and stay at a hotel overnight so we’d be “fresh” before driving home with the puppy. That meant that if we were going to do this, we’d essentially have to leave the NEXT DAY (Friday) so we’d be ready to pick up our puppy on Saturday morning.

Can you imagine the emotional roller coaster that I was on at this point!? J wasn’t even HOME when I got this phone call (which is rare because he fully works from home these days) so I had to hang up the breeder, call HIM, explain the situation and ask what he wanted to do. He was NOT all that happy about it. I think all the back and forth felt a little too much for him and he just wanted to settle with first pick for the next litter.

But for ME, I was never really all that sure that I wanted a mini Goldendoodle. If I’d had the choice, I would pick the medium Goldendoodle 10000x over the mini. SOOOO again – we decided to sleep on it and the next morning we looked at each other and said ok. LET’S DO THIS.

And so we did and the rest is history.

That, my friends, is the story of Daisy.