Big Day

Tomorrow is the big day. We drive three hours to pick up our eight week old German Shepherd pup. We finally decided on a name, Nina. My husband and I had both, unknowingly, placed the name Nina on our separate name lists. Sunday, I said we needed to decide on her name. We compared our lists. There it was, Nina. Although, I was going for Nena spelling, my husband found that Nina means "mighty" in Native American so he wanted the spelling to remain Nina. I can go for that.


We've only seen pictures of her, and her eleven other litter mates, over these past three weeks. We thought we located her in a picture because she has one brown toe on one of her white tipped paws. In that picture, she was peacefully looking out through her kennel, ears perked in puppy fashion.


While I'm excited about this new challenge, raising a puppy, I'm also a little nervous, but I suppose that's to be expected. We've had lots of dogs over the years. Only two we had as puppies. One, Scottie, a small peekapoo mix, when we were first married and then Xena, our last German Shepherd who passed at the age of twelve in 2008.


I don't think we'll have problems with Maggie and Lucy accepting our little Nina, since she's a pup. I think Maggie may be a little put off, at first, because she's a sensitive dog. But I think she'll come around. Maggie never really liked being the alpha female of the dogs around here anyway. She's always been more of a follower. Wondering how Buddy, the cat, will take to his new housemate. Buddy is ten and set in his ways but he's always gotten along with our dogs. Guess time will tell.


While my mind has been full of puppy thoughts I haven't forgotten my horses. They've been looking so nice this week! Shiny coats and not muddy. The warm, dry weather encouraged me to get out there and brush the winter coats off.  After I get Nina settled into a routine the next couple of weeks, my other mission is working with my guys as well as training the pup. I have a new saddle that I haven't even been able to use on Bo yet.


The next four weeks will be full of change around here and I feel I'm finally ready for it.