18 Oct 2016

A family announcement

I have been keeping a little secret from my readers and friends on social media, the time has come to share it with you all.

Most will know that family means everything to us and we decided the time had come to expand our family… however, not in the way, most reading this will have expected when they first saw this post.

We are not having another baby, we are being joined by another ‘fur baby’!

Some may think that our choice to bring another animal into our family is some kind of ‘baby replacement’ strategy, as clearly having another baby is something we should be doing right now (so people keep telling us!) however, we see this as a very natural next step to expand our family.

Right now, our ‘human pack’ is just as we like it, beautifully balanced, however when our working cocker spaniel became desperately unwell a few years ago, we faced some very difficult decisions and heartbreaking realities. Once the situation improved, we started to have a think about the future.

Something that became strikingly obvious when our boy was hospitalised was that we simply couldn’t be without a dog in our home. The eery silence in the house when he wasn’t there; no soft sighs from the corner of the room, no excited tail wags, the woodland felt still on our walks, even the squirrels started homing in on his patch in his absence… The thought of going to get another dog in the future, when we no longer had our beloved boy, or when he was very old was simply too hard to take.

So, the decision was made to look for a litter once he had made a full recovery and in time, when the right puppy was found, we would add to our ‘Woodland Pack’.

After some months of keeping my eyes and ears open, I saw an advert, telephoned the number and in an instant, was drawn to a particular litter. The breeder is a man who knows his working cockers and I felt that this was a litter we had to go and see.

We made no mention of our first trip to see the litter to anyone and decided we would go back in a few weeks to see them once they were moving about a bit more. We also decided, that this next trip would be the time to reveal our plan to our daughter.

It was the sort of morning I used to dream of as a child; we took our daughter into the breeder’s home, introduced her to the mother of the pups and she was then led in to see the puppies by the breeder’s lovely wife.

A total surprise, our little girl’s face was an absolute picture. She fell completely silent, almost stunned and then, as if someone had cast a spell, an enormous grin appeared on her face and soft, kind, loving eyes met mine as she was handed the pup we were most interested in.

That was it. She was completely and utterly in love.

We stayed for about 30 minutes checking the pup over, getting to know the mother and chatting to the lovely couple who bred the litter and then we left for home, our minds made up.

So, in only a few weeks time, our new puppy will be home, and we will undertake the task of house training, settling him, as well as helping our first spaniel adjust to having a new dog in our home.

We have the crate set up already, to provide a safe place to rest and retreat to and although it was nearly 10 years ago that we had a puppy first time (and without a 3 year old ‘Elmira Duff’ clone buzzing about!), we are ready and I simply cannot wait!

It will be a lot of work and an adjustment for all, but it will be wonderful way to grow our family.

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