One of the things I started to do shortly after Holly celebrated her 2 year post-diagnosis anniversary was to start thinking about if I would want another dog once she had gone.
I had a good think about it and decided that I would want another one, but what?
First of all I felt incredibly guilty thinking about getting another dog when Holly was there and still very healthy so I stopped thinking about it. Until she had her wobble in the November. That made me realise that doing some planning and thinking and investigating before-hand was a sensible thing to do so that all the ground-work would be in place and ready for use when I was ready.
So I sat down with Holly and told her what I was doing, I wasn't too sure if she understood but she gave the impression of listening to what I was telling her.
First port of call was the internet and those websites where you can answer questions about your lifestyle and it will tell you your ideal dog breed. Some of the results were hilarious and very very wrong. But in the top 5 each time was always at least 2 breeds from the gun-dog group. When I think of the gun-dog group the first things that come to mind are ditzy spaniels and huge bouncy pointers and retrievers, neither of which are things I was looking for. But as the group was a reoccurring theme I thought the group warranted further investigation.
I very carefully read about each breed, their size, personality and known health issues. And for the most part I dismissed them as too big and boistrous or far too energetic. Holly used to be energetic but it was a controlled energy and not a wild uncontrolled wizzing around energy. OK sometimes if we had not been somewhere she thought of as fantastically brilliant for ages, such as the beach, she would spend the first 15 or 20 minutes going mad-dog.
Just when I was about to dismiss the whole group I came across the Hungarian Wire-haired Vizsla. The more I read the more I liked the sound of them, but I had never met one. So I started to research breeders and found a few that I liked the sound of from their websites, the only problem was that most of them were several hundred miles away. All except for one who was about an hours drive and fairly close to where I have friends living.
I wrote and re-wrote and then deleted and started again an email to her many many times over the course of about 6 weeks before I finally plucked up the courage to click send. We emailed back and forth a few times, mainly me asking questions and her sending answers, and eventually we provisionally set a date for me to go out there and meet her gang (and her and her partner) and see if they were what I thought they would be and if I liked them. And also for her and her dogs to meet me and see if I would be someone she would consider putting on her puppy-in-waiting list. We set it for early May in the theory that it would be warmer and drier and we would be able to sit in the garden. On the day we sat in the house watching the rain. I had arranged to go from hers to my friends and have a day out, the plan was to call in and see the dogs, have a cup of tea and a chat and probably only stay about an hour. In the end I was there for almost 3 hours as we sat and talked dogs past present and future, it was a text from my friends wanting to know if I was going to be there for lunch that made me aware of how much time had passed. I resisted the temptation to smuggle one of her dogs into the car, said my goodbyes and went off to see my friends.
The next day I dropped her and email saying I loved the dogs and was I someone she would consider allowing to adopt one of her puppies when the time came. The reply came back yes!
Fast forward several months and emails to about a week after I had said the last goodbye to Holly, I got an email, that it sounded like she had had as much trouble writing as I had the first one to her. One of her bitches was in pup and her scan had revealed more than the average number of offspring so would I like to be a reserve in case there was a spare? I was about to go away for a long weekend so asked if she would pencil me in as a possible and I would think about it and talk to Mum and Dad on my return and let her know one way or another. The answer went back as yes I would be happy to be a reserve.
You may remember from an earlier post that my littlest sister was having a baby, well little sister was due about 10 days before the puppies. By the middle of last week Littlest sister was over-due and the bitch was showing signs of being early. Littlest sister went into Hospital on the Thursday evening and (eventually!) had a little girl just after 4.30am on the Saturday morning. I, and the rest of my family, spent most of Friday leaping up excitedly every time the phone bleeped with a text message or a phone call. On Saturday I got an email saying it looked like pups might be on the way so I went straight into frantically leaping up every time I get notification that an email has arrived.
So far plenty of email updates from the breeder and replies from the other new puppy owners in waiting, mostly about what the mum-to-be is doing now, having fun and doing anything and everything except having pups!
So I am going to go back to idly thinking about names should there be a 'spare' it's not so much a short-list, its more of a long and growing list.
