It's been over a month since I last posted. Christmas was relaxing and fun with Nathan and Gillian and Erin. Frances is more refined in her responses to gifts, but it was still a joy to see all the elation, excitement, and noise the littler ones made when they opened their gifts.
Some background...
Cris called me a week ago and asked if I wanted to go and see a dog that needed to be rescued. He's a black lab mix and 1.5 years old. A co-worker was trying to find him a home and asked Cris if he might be interested. Of course not sure if any of you know, but animals are not at the top of Cris' list. We have not had any pets for the last 4 years since our last one, Feedback, passed away. The kids have been wanting a new pet for a long long time, and they didn't much care whether or not it was a dog or a cat, they just wanted a pet. Well of course we've been saying no mostly because Cris in general is not an animal fan. Well you can imagine that when he called me to discuss the option of this new dog, I almost fell out of my chair. I wondered if he was feeling well or had perhaps he had fallen at work and hit his head. At any rate, we discussed it briefly and concluded that the very least we could do was go to the family's house to meet the dog. This was last Monday. The co-worker was once a dog breeder and so had made a pretty good assessment of this dog's personality and health, etc. The co-worker ended up with the dog because it belonged to her daughter who recently had a new baby and decided that she could not care for the dog with another small child in the house and a newborn and two other large dogs as well. So since this dog had only be living with them a few months, she decided that it was the one that needed to go. So that's how Cris' co-worker came into the picture and how we are now the adoptive family of our very large "ONYX."
As you can see he loves the kids... or rather, the kids love him...
Onyx has had a little trouble adjusting as you can see below....and no that is not a broken leg, it's his chew toy!
He's territorial with our family already, so if you walk past the gate, you can bet the he will assert his territorial dominance and let you know that you are on his turf now. He's been great with the kids. Gillian has tried to ride him, so we had to explain that he's not a horse. Nathan has tried to walk him but needless to say Nathan has been the one who was walked.
We love the fact that he is house trained and crate trained and has had some obedience training too. He will sit, lay, and stay on command. He's learned to fetch in the last week with Frances and Nathan and he loves his long walks. He's learning to "heel" but there are so many wonderful things to see in the neigborhood that he gets a little excited and tries to pull you along with him. Just be careful of the people walking or riding by as he thinks he needs to protect you from them. We are working on the not barking at everyone when we are out. He manages to control himself if he knows he's going to get a treat but you can see that it's all he can manage. He gets along well with other animals, it's just people that are strangers to him that brings out his territorialism. He barked and growled at both me and Cris the first night we met him at his co-worker's house. Of course if you give him treat, he's fast to make friends. It took him a little longer to warm up to Cris that night but only because Cris wasn't offering goodies. When he finally did, all was well.
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