It is about time I posted about something happy… I’d like to introduce you to Benjamin Segall (aka Benny, Benji or B-dawg), golden retriever, age 4.5 weeks!

We’ve always known our next dog would be a golden. We just thought it was going to be many years from now. But, we are two-dog people and in light of recent events, we found ourslves ready for a little golden boy soon than we though.

While I would have liked to rescue a dog, as we did with China, we had very specific requirements as to breed, gender, temperment, and age. We don’t want to face the extreme problems we faced in the past. The shelters in the area never have goldens, and the golden rescues told me they almost never have any dogs under 6 months of age. The age and gender are very important so that China will be happy and comfortable with her new sibling. So, we turened to breeders.

We had been looking into various breeders for a few weeks when I found the one that caught my eye. I talked to the owner and she was wonderful – a huge dog lover like us. She had 4 male puppies still available because the litter turned out 7 males 4 females. We arranged to visit them today, knowing that it was doubtful we’d l;eave without picking one out (or, I should say, getting picked by one!)

Around lunchtime today, we headed out. I made a quick stop into the pet store for a collar. I was told to bring a 12″ collar to put on my puppy of choice. She suggested a cat collar because people were buying collars that were too big, but I found a small dog color I loved. I was pretty sure it would fit because I could get it small enough to be a bracelet, but I bought a 12″ black cat collar too, just in case.

It took 2 hours to get out to the breeder’s country home in the mountains. Goldens galore! She loveds her goldens, so she has ended up with quite a few adults. We met all the babies and all of the adults. They were all sweet, fun-loving, and happy. We met the mommy (Run Around Sue) and daddy (Git R Done Jake) of our litter.

At puppy picking time, I made sure to pick up all 4 available boys. I new instantly when I picked up my puppy. We had started discussing names on the drive out. In the running was Jack and Guiness. I thought it would be good to have the owner’s family start to call him by his name. When we were nearly to thier house, we passed “Bennie’s Beach Campground” and Danny said “Benny is a good name for a dog”. I agreed – especially if it is short for Benjamin. I like the nickname Benji too. We I heldmy puppy fir the first time, I knew he wanted to be Benny.

We stayed for a while talking about dogs. I could talk about dogs for days (and pretty much do). Another family came to make their pick, and since their collar was too big, I let the owner give them my spare. After sveral “one last goodbye!”s to Mr Ben, we finally headed home.

Benji will be coming home in February! By the way, he is Itchy McScratcherson in the video because he isn’t used to a collar yet.

Bed time for me now…