Daisy Doo

I wanted a third baby.  Real bads.  I begged Chris for months.  Actually, almost a year.  But he was adamant that we should not be outnumbered.  “Man to man coverage,” he would say.  “Can’t take that spread offense, Mom.”

Just before Christmas, we finally agreed on a solution.  We would get a puppy.  And I could snuggle and cuddle and sniff her forever and ever amen.

Which is how Daisy joined our family.

We got Daisy from a rescue society in Orlando.  It was the craziest process I’ve ever been through.  First, we had to show up at a PetSmart completely across town from where we live by 8:00 in the morning just so that we could get our names on the adoption list.  This didn’t mean we would be adopting.  It just meant that we were on the LIST to adopt.

I had been following the adoption process pretty closely and I knew we needed to be there really early because you had the chance to adopt in the order you were on the adoption list.  So, if we wanted a puppy, we needed to be early.  We got there by 7:45 and were #8 on the list.

Step one:  Accomplished

The puppies weren’t going to arrive at the pet store for another few hours, so we goofed around town for a while and finally showed back up for the adoption process to begin at 10:00am.

Chris and I knew from looking online that they were expecting a TON of puppies at this particular adoption day.  And they were not kidding.  By the time all the puppies got there, there were over 60 of them!  It was incredible!  And loud!  And smelly!

The way the adoption lottery worked was that the rescue staff went down the list and called your name one by one.  Since all the puppies were in these two giant pens, you basically had to just reach down and pick up a puppy.  You got to spend as much time as you wanted with the one you picked up, and you got to decide if that was the one you wanted.  But the catch was that if that WASN’T the one you wanted, your name went to the bottom of the list.  And the list was incredible.  Over 100 people were signed up to adopt that day.

As we watched the puppies rolling around in their pen and the rescue workers getting ready to begin, Chris and I decided we would just grab a puppy and be done.  Wham, bam, thankyouma’am.

Finally, they called our number!

“LAB MIX!  GIRL!” I yelled out.  And they scooped down and picked up Daisy.  And it was love at first sight.

Seriously. I am in love with this puppy. She is the sweetest, most mischievous, funniest, dumbest (sorry, Daisy…) fur-ball ever to walk the earth.

And she eats EVERYTHING. She’s getting better about it, but she can put a hurting on a book if you leave it laying around.

She can eat Shopkins whole. She loves to chew Lego pieces. But her favorite thing in the whole world are plastic clothes hangers. She loves those suckers.

She’s getting much better about the chewing, though. Now, she really just likes to carry things around the house. Which means socks are never with their mates, shoes are never in a pair, baseballs and tennis balls are always in weird places like the bathroom floor, and stuffed animals end up in her crate every day.

We’re all just glad she’s stopped chewing these things up, at least. That’s a big improvement.

Aside from carrying things around (she is part retriever, after all…), she follows Bean around everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Anywhere Bean goes, Daisy is never far behind. They play outside together, they watch TV together, they even sleep together at night. It’s just the sweetest thing in the world.

Her other favorite being in the house is Molly. She adores Big Molly. In fact, if she can’t find Molly for whatever reason, she just walks around whining and crying until they are back together again.

And Daisy has been so good for Molly, too. Molly instantly seemed about three years younger. Suddenly, she was wrestling again and running again and playing with toys again. It was just wonderful to see her thriving. Turns out, she had been really lonely since my sweet Lucy died a few years ago. Now that Daisy is around, though, Molly’s quality of life has drastically improved. Which makes us all happy!

Yeah, Daisy has been good for us all. I am so happy she is part of our family now. When we rescued her, she was from a litter of lab mixes that had been found in a box behind a gas station in Alabama. She had mites, worms, a GI infection, kennel cough, and a plethora of other health issues. It took us about a month to nurse her back to health. Now, we can’t remember life before Daisy Doo! (And for her sake, I hope she can’t remember life before us…)

Daisy is about five months old now, and is getting HUMONGOUS. She is already taller than Molly. She’s skinny as a rail, but is starting to fill out a bit. If she ever grows into her paws, then we are in trouble. I’m starting to think she is a lab/horse mix.

In all honesty, we aren’t sure what kind of mix she is. She seems to be part black lab, but we aren’t sure about the other parts. Big Molly was a rescue dog, too, and we weren’t sure about her breed either (though she actually looks like a purebred lab sometimes because of her big dopey head!). But we’re fine with that. We like our dogs with a little “variety” in them!

Daisy has made herself right at home with us, and we are so happy that she is here!