So your family decides to get a dog. I would have imagined by this point that there had been some discussion about what type of dog you want, old, young, small, big, even giant in fact and lets face it guys its big thing! This creature is going to invade your home for the next decade at least … you’ve got to make sure its the right one, and so the search begins, easy right ?? Absolutely not … its the most difficult, heart wrenching, frustrating ordeal I’ve ever encountered and let me tell you, it didn’t even last very long.

We already had an idea that we wanted to get another German Shepherd and I’d ideally have liked a long haired, not that it was too much of an issue, but everywhere you look you find stickers and posters with big bold writing “ADOPT DONT SHOP” and “STOP PUPPY FARMING”. So we did what any normal animal loving couple did … trawled the internet and set up play dates with the dogs in the dogs home.

Now did you know its easier to foster a real life human baby than it is a dog? There’s checks for your house, checks for your income, checks for your past conduct with animals, checks for your immediate family and if your working you cant work more than four hours a day. Now I’m not criticising and obviously jokes aside the people in the rescue centres and the rehoming shelters do an amazing job and they have to follow certain procedures as these dogs have 99% of the time had a pretty rough time. Added to the fact that they have to cover themselves, because you and I both know, as sad as it is, in todays society … where there’s a blame there’s a claim.

We don’t have children but we do live in a fairly busy home and there is usually a random child or three dotting around (we fancy ourselves as the cool aunts … we’re not, we’re just unpaid childcare, we know this and choose to ignore it anyway). So we knew we wanted a big dog and were open to any kind of larger dog, we’ll not go into my BMI but lets say a teacup Chihuahua probably wouldn’t look right, and we had it in our minds that larger dogs are harder to place purely because of their size. It became a common occurrence that the larger dogs were to be placed in homes with children over 12. apparently dogs over 60 inches high have a child phobia!?! Of course we get it … we’re fairly intelligent, these people have to make sure some poor child wont be mauled by a stressed out dinosaur. After many conversations with shelters and a especially one very strange lady who wouldn’t give me details of on certain dog for, and I quote “data protection reasons”, since when did dogs care about GDPR?? we decided to rethink and so we went down the puppy route (for our sins).

Jasmine came from a reputable stud and so we thought ok we have a starting point so we looked on the stud dogs and came across the stud that we wanted, I say “we” in this part but I am very aware that poor Amy (mum number two, if you didn’t know Atlas has two mums, you do now and yes we will go into that at some point and no he doesn’t wear a rainbow collar … yet !) ended up just agreeing because I was probably a little overbearing and had reached the end of my tether with the dog search and wanted something sorted. We then searched for a litter that had been born, nothing technical, we used Google and an iPhone, and found a litter.

They were black and tan, mainly short hair but one that looked like he was going to be a plush coat. and let me tell you, they were the cutest thing id ever seen. They were only two weeks old but the breeder said to come along anyway and if we wanted to we could have second pick of the litter … Perfect. He had mum and grandma there to see also but said out of 8 puppies there was only one girl that he was keeping. Ok now until this point …. shockingly we hadn’t ever discussed whether we wanted female or male so we decided that although the male would be bigger we weren’t too bothered and agreed a time to go over to the house to meet the puppies, and turns out the whole family and the two adult dogs.

It was the second week of December 2017 and freezing. Turns out the family lived in the most beautiful location right in the heart of the Cheshire countryside, which is all lovely and nice until you have to find it in the dark, is there a reason they don’t have lights in the country?? So we go in and have a chat with the breeder and his wife, who by the way was such a lovely couple!

We had cuddles with mum and grandma dog (at this point I feel like I’m writing a story for a children’s collection, but let me tell you … this actually took place) and then the breeder stood up and said the famous last words … “would you like to meet the puppies”.

 

This is what he presented us with  … two weeks and two days old ❤