Jake

We have talked about the benefits of having a family dog a couple of times, but nothing serious. But then 3 weeks ago as we were leaving the football game on Friday, Blaine said, "Lets get a dog."
From there, the subject escalated rather quickly (as is usually the case for us). We were online a lot doing research, watching videos, and searching for puppies. We even went to the animal shelter one time. Eventually we found a puppy online that lived a little over an hour away from us.

Last Saturday we drove out to Fletcher to see him in a tiny town in a part of Oklahoma we haven't ever seen before. (We even thought we saw some hills slightly resembling mountains). The lady was very nice and was telling us about how she got her 3 golden retrievers and part of the story was that it turned out that both she and the lady she got them from "were the same religion - both LDS. Mormon." So I smiled and said, "Thats funny. So are we." We decided that this was meant to be and she pointed out that we could appreciate that these puppies were "born in the covenant." It was funny.

Anyways, the puppies' dad is average size for a male golden retriever but is very happy and playful and likes to jump up and look at you and dance with you. Their mom is smaller and calmer with such soft, smooth hair. (But I guess that was just due to her pregnancy hormones). So our puppy Jake will be 3 weeks old on Monday and we can take him home when he is 6 weeks old, so the first week of November. We'll probably go visit him tomorrow, though, since he's already bigger and more active than he was last week.

We want to bring him to Montana for Thanksgiving, but I'm worried he'll be too big to fly. I'm going to try anyways and hopefully the airline people will just think he's so cute and not give me any problems during the holiday season. We'll only have had him for about 2 weeks when we leave, and we'll be gone during the day, so I want him to be with us as much as possible and interact with people and get used to traveling and adapting. We'll for sure bring him to Christmas with us, though. He'll be too big to fly, so we'll just drive, but we've been on a TON of road trips in our 4 years of marriage, so thats no big deal.

We are very excited to add him to our family! That's right - add him to our family. We don't want people to think of us as the weird dog people who obsess over it and treat it like their child, because we're not and it's not. Golden retrievers are very smart, gentle, playful dogs and who doesn't want a happy, loving puppy (or person, for that matter) around? And as you all know, we want a baby very much and can't wait for that blessing as well. Once we do have kids, I think our dog will be a friend and a blessing to them as well. In our research, I was amazed by the stories of dogs caring for and helping people with a variety of things like PTSD, anxiety, blindness-- my favorite was of this golden retriever playing with and comforting a little boy with down syndrome. And, have you ever seen Marley and Me? I'm guessing that's probably a pretty accurate account of typical dog owners. (And thats also where I got my "Boca-hantas" joke) Lots of people told us not to get one and some of them had some good points, but we are grown ups and make our own decisions and have our own reasons.

Anyways, now about the name Jake. We thought about a couple of different options but wanted to make it special somehow. The runner-up name was "Boomer," after Boomer Sooner since he's our Oklahoma dog. LOTS of people have dogs named Boomer around here though anyways. So here's the story about why Jake is a sentimental name:

When Blaine was like 7, he wanted a dog SO bad. So his parents got a golden doodle from the pound and he named the dog Jake. But it started to chew on everything, so his parents gave it back pretty soon after that. And the story goes that Blaine prayed for Jake every night until he was in high school, and was so grateful that he got to have a dog for at least a little bit. What a cute boy!

Hopefully we can make the drive out there again tomorrow and come back with some new pictures of how big he's getting!