Tag Archives: adoption

Welcome Tucker! (or Filling The Dog Shaped Hole In My Family)

When Dante died, it was awful. We had Dante for almost 13 years. He was a family member, not a pet. But his death was somewhat expected and when he passed away we had Chaucer to look forward to.

When Chaucer died, we were all in shock. It was horrible to lose a puppy, but his death also brought back the loss of Dante. It’s tough to miss a puppy that we only had for a few days. In some way, it felt like he never existed.

After losing 2 dogs in 6 days, my parents had to take a short break from dogs. They weren’t sure what they wanted to do next. After thinking about it for a few days, they realized that our family was missing a dog and they wanted to find our newest family member.

One of Chaucer’s brothers (originally named Rockwell) was still looking for a forever home. So my parents decided to meet him and after meeting him, he was ours.

We changed his name to Tucker (my mom picked it out) and his been a part of the family for about a week now. I have yet to meet him, but my parents do email me pictures of him pretty regularly.

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From what my parents have told me, he is a very sweet and curious puppy. He’s super active but also getting very good at obedience (he already knows several commands). He’s met a bunch of people in the week that my parents have had him and everyone has fallen in love with him. And he’ll be starting puppy school this week so he will get some more socialization skills as well as learning more commands.

We didn’t announce Tucker’s adoption to people right away. We were terrified that something would happen to him like what happened to Chaucer. But Tucker went to the vet on Friday and got a clean bill of health.

I’m hoping to take a trip next month (when I’m supposed to be (f)unemployed again) so I can meet Tucker. If I don’t, there’s a chance that I might not get to meet him until Thanksgiving, and to me that’s unacceptable!

I’m aware that some people might think that we are forgetting about Dante and Chaucer because we got Tucker so soon. But that’s not the case at all. We still miss both dogs every day. Whenever I talk to my mom about how Tucker is doing, we are always comparing him to both dogs (Tucker has some big shoes to fill). Without a dog in my parents’ home, things didn’t seem right. It was too empty and quiet. And since one of my mom’s jobs has been running the pet therapy program at the hospital where my dad used to work (and where she is getting all her treatments), having a dog is practically her job.

I’m just glad that my parents were able to find another dog that needed a loving home. And Tucker seems to be fitting in perfectly with our family so far!

Welcome Chaucer (or The Fluffy Puppy Has Arrived)

I hope that you are all having a great Christmas. My family doesn’t really celebrate Christmas, but I will do a recap of my day soon.

So I flew in to see my parents on Saturday and on Sunday it was puppy day! We had to drive to a store about 30 minutes away to pick up Chaucer (that’s where the foster mom was meeting us and the other families).

We got there super early (because we were so excited) so we walked around the store and looked at all the cute puppy stuff. I really wanted to get Chaucer a sweater or coat because he’ll be going to the snow soon, but whatever we get him he’ll probably outgrow in a few weeks.

Finally, we saw Chaucer’s foster mom and she brought the newest member of the Levin family over to us.

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Even though he doesn’t look as much like a weasel as he did in his baby picture (my mom’s words, not mine), he is still ridiculously cute! And super fluffy!

And in case you are wondering, the neck pillow looking thing is so Chaucer can’t lick at the incision site from where he was neutered. He licked at it the first day and it opened up, so he has to wear the “donut of shame” until it’s all healed. But we all think that the donut looks way better than a cone and the pattern actually looks very cute on him.

I played official photographer so there aren’t any pictures of me and Chaucer yet. But I sure got a bunch of my parents with him!

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My parents borrowed a crate for Chaucer (they want to try to crate-train him), so we put him in that for the ride home and he fell asleep after about 5 minutes of screaming like crazy.

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We got him home and started to work on potty training him. He has picked up where his potty area is in the backyard and has only had one minor accident so far. We aren’t saying that he’s potty trained yet, but we think that he will pick it up pretty quickly.

Since Chaucer hasn’t gotten all of his shots yet, he can’t go for walks outside of our home (parvo is very contagious and fatal and he needs to get vaccinated against it in about a week). But one of the pet therapy volunteers let my mom borrow this dog sling and we took Chaucer for a quick walk around the neighborhood.

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After our walk, we put him on his leash in our front yard. Chaucer’s foster mom is a dog trainer and she worked on some commands with the puppies before they were adopted out. So when we got Chaucer he already knew “come” and “sit”. So we practiced his commands with him.

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We also have a lot set up in the house for him. Besides the kennel that we used to bring him home (which is his bed in my parents’ room), we have a play pen set up for him in the family room. I decided to call it his “gated community” and he seems to like it.

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We definitely tired him out with all the adventures we did on his first day. He seems to be happy and hopefully he knows now that we are his forever family.

The Exciting News (or Meet Chaucer!)

On Saturday, before I went to the show, I called my mom to check in. I wanted to see how she was feeling after chemo and how Dante was doing. When I first tried calling, nobody answered. So I tried calling again after I had my lunch and then my mom answered.

She said that she didn’t answer before because my parents were being interviewed to adopt a puppy! My parents have been looking at getting another puppy for a little over a year now. The search seemed to be put on hold a bit when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and then put on hold again after we found out about Dante’s cancer. But my mom was still casually looking at puppies every so often.

My brother found this puppy online and my parents decided to go and see the puppy and get interviewed to see if they could potentially adopt him. There were a bunch of people at the interview (there were 6 puppies up for adoption) and when my parents were interviewed, they felt like they had a good chance at getting a puppy. They had to share which puppy they were most interested in, but the foster mom was going to match the dogs with families that she felt were the best fit.

So on Saturday afternoon, my parents didn’t know if they would get the puppy or when they might find out either way. But on Sunday morning, I got 2 emails pretty much at the same time from my parents.

They got the puppy!!!

His name is Chaucer (and they think they will keep the name because it’s cute and it’s literary like Dante). He was rescued from a hoarder and we know that his mother was a German Shepherd (we don’t know what his father was). He’s 7 weeks old right now and he should be coming home right before Christmas (so I’ll be home when Chaucer comes home). And I know I’m biased because this puppy is the newest member of the family, but I think he’s the cutest thing ever!

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This picture was taken a week or two ago so he looks a little older now (at least that’s what my parents told me).

Now, I hope you all don’t think that we are getting Chaucer as a replacement for Dante. My parents have been looking at puppies for a while and they said that when they met the right puppy they would get it. This is just how the timing worked out. Dante still enjoys playing with other dogs, so I think that getting him a puppy is really going to make him happier and perk him up. And hopefully Dante will help us in training Chaucer.

I’m just so happy that we are going to have a new member of our family. I know that I won’t get to see the puppy too often, but I’m excited to get to meet him in a week and spend a few days with him before he grows up too much.