Gandy Has Entered the Building!

We came home yesterday, as predicted, with one of the pups (on the left) in this picture. Her name is Gandy.

Of the three we saw yesterday (playing in a grassy strip adjacent to the shopping center asphalt) her sister was too aggressive and always-on; her brother, too passive; and she was (we thought) just right.

She has her moments of frenzied mouth-oriented crazies, and still only knows how to play with her litter-mates, full out, unrelenting, and teeth-first. After ten minutes of this, and many opportunities to reinforce NO! when she bites hands or socks on feet or beard or newspaper on the hearth–anything other than her designated toys–she calms down and becomes docile but curious, sweet and submissive.

For the hour ride home yesterday, she was alert, cuddly and issued not a peep. This is something for which we were unprepared, because Tsuga’s hour ride home in 2003 was one constant tortured howl of separation and anxiety. His first night with us, the ONE where we tried the crate, was a miserable failure, with more moaning and barking and angst.

And so it was with fear and trembling and mental preparation for what surely lay ahead that I slipped her into the crate by my side of the bed at 9 pm. She issued not a peep until 2, did her business outside the back door, and after a few minutes getting comfortable, went off to sleep again until we got up. Halleleujah!

These were pups “rescued” by an individual from a “free puppies” indiscriminate back-of-a-pickup give-away at the local Walmart. Fearing bad placement under those circumstances, the gal we got the pup from took home the mom and the entire litter, and is seeing that they go to good homes. We trust ours will be one of them. So far, so amazingly good.

Had it not been for a late morning call yesterday from R, who offered us the loan of a crate (until Gandy is house trained, I’m thinking it won’t be long at all) we would not have brought her home. She takes her meals in the crate, and does not seem fearful of it, though at the moment, she is sleeping unconfined on the rug remnant in front of the flickering wood stove–the exact position so often filled with 15 times more dog in physical size, a yeller dog possessed of a character and largeness of soul that she, we are increasingly confident, will someday grow to equal, in her own unique way.

It promises to be a wild ride, and I promise to not take a day for granted, and that more than a few words and pixels will be forthcoming.