Skip to main content

the quest for a furry brother

gunter and john
when john was born, he came home to an awesome big brother named gunter. gunter was a 100lb+ lab mutt we adopted from a rescue agency back in 2005 in arizona. his age was never definite, but he was somewhere around 10 when his baby brother came home from the hospital. gunter was a hale and hearty old man, though, with no health problems and plenty of energy, so we had visions of john learning to walk by pulling up on the puppy. every day when john and i came home from work and school, gunter would come lick john's face and john would giggle.

unfortunately, back in early november, gunter fell suddenly drastically ill. he was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, and eight days after he first got sick, we had to put him down. fortunately he didn't suffer much - in fact, he was in great spirits and did pretty well that week. he spent his last day on the planet laying in the backyard in the sun with his family. it was terrible to say goodbye to this furry member of our family.

a little time has passed, and while we still miss gunter every day, we're ready to welcome a new furry brother into john's family. we've been perusing the websites, talking with rescue organizations, etc. we're on the hunt for a BIG lab or retriever mutt, which is surprisingly difficult to find here in baton rouge. there are lots of great dogs up for adoption in the 40-60 lb range, but we really just want another bruiser.

today we visited the denham springs animal shelter. they're a no-kill shelter with lots of awesome dogs ... but again no big guys or gals. we've also visit east baton rouge animal control, and the yelp house. and i can tell you this: there are some beauties out there. tons of them. beautiful dogs. if you're thinking of a dog in the baton rouge area, check these shelters out. just because we haven't found OUR new baby yet, doesn't mean your baby's not there waiting for you!

but for now ... our new furry family member is still out there waiting for us. we'll know when we find him/her. and we'll keep looking. because come on ... every little boy should have a beast he can lovingly climb, who will respond to a pulled tail by licking his face. or at least, my little boy wants that.

in loving memory of john's first big brother, the amazing gunter.
Labels:

Comments

~*~*~Claire~*~*~ said…
Where the like button. hopefully a new big brother comes soon xxx
January 9, 2011 at 9:22 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

on lullabies

i am not a singer. if you've sat behind me in church, you know this to be true. (and i'm sorry.) a musician, yes. a singer no. and yet i find myself singing to john almost nonstop. and the beauty is, he seems to actually like it! (there's no accounting for taste. he also thinks i'm the most beautiful woman in the world. i'm no ogre, but i'm certainly not winning any beauty contests outside of my son's brain!) and actually, i've written some lullabies for john that are pretty nice. and it made me think: did your parents sing to you? do you remember what they sang, and better yet, if you have kids, do you sing the same songs to them? reply in the comments!
5 comments
Read more

i'm furberizing my baby

ok, let's get this straight right off the bat: i don't know if i am literally following dr. furber's methods of sleep training. there are so many versions out there. but saying we're furberizing john is WAY more fun than saying that i'm letting him cry his little lungs out in an attempt to teach him to sleep on his own. it's night two of our efforts. he went right to sleep last night, which was great. and he slept for 5.25 hours (!!!!) before waking up at 2:30 a.m. when he woke up crying, i let him cry for 5 minutes before going in to soothe him. (the soothing barely works at all, by the way, but it's what i'm supposed to do ...) then i let him cry for 10 more minutes before going in to soothe him again. next on the agenda was a 15 minute stretch of crying - but he fell asleep after 8 minutes. so a sum total of 22 minutes of crying. not too bad for night two. i've heard night three can be the worst ... so we'll hold on to our hats tonight. mean
5 comments
Read more

home

annapolis rock  1988 thirty years ago, my family moved from denton, tx, to a tiny rural town in the mountains of maryland. i remember being sad as we sold our things (we were packing everything into two old cars to drive north) and actually crying over the sale of our washing machine. transition does strange things to kids' emotions. yet i remember arriving, excited, into this strange green mountainous place, and i remember even more anticipation as we found a home ("the old taylor place") and got ready for school to start at smithsburg elementary. third grade -- the same grade john starts this school year. i remember meeting my first friend on a dusty dirt road - the "alley" that ran behind the high school tennis courts and athletic fields from our home just at the town's outskirts to her home just outside downtown. (if you've never known a small town downtown, that's probably hard to envision). it was an amazing place to be a child. 199
Post a Comment
Read more