Newest Member of the Family

Yes, I am sure you are in shock. Not by the fact, that I got ANOTHER dog, but that I actually took the time to blog in over a month and a half. I guess I just didn't feel like anything was newsworthy even though we've been very busy with baseball, track, Heritage School, Girl Scouts, a new student teacher in my room and logging tons of hours at Bejeweled. I guess you could say that I've replaced that silly game with blogging. In fact, I haven't read a blog in over a week, so if you don't read this, I am surely can not be offended. ;)

Back in December I thought that maybe, just maybe our Miniature Schnauzer, Ranger, needed a permanent friend to play with at our home. However, I did NOT want to housebreak a new puppy or go through that awful chewing stage. So, I decided to look into a pet rescue. I found several rescues in and around Omaha and Lincoln, but they all required a huge amount of paperwork (which I filled out) and a home visit or two. I was starting to think that adopting a real person would actually be easier.

After much work and communication with one pet rescue I learned two things.

1. Rescue dogs can be severely needy and unstable for an active household.

2. Rescue dogs can be more expensive than just buying a brand new one and many aren't even house trained.

In fact, one rescue wouldn't allow us to adopt their "puppy mill" dogs due to their fear of our schnauzer and Grant. Really...Ranger? Grant? Okay, well yes, I can understand that concern.

That's when I started to watch the website for Pound Puppies and found this cutie. It only took 74 visits to find a female, non-shedding dog that behaves well with children as well as gets along with other dogs.

Meet Princess Penelope, which we will call "Penny".

She's now got her "furever" home with us!

We had to wait an extra ten days before meeting Penny, which the shelter called "Sally Jo" due to getting Kennel Cough due to being placed in confinement. Poor little girl! Miss Penny is a Shih Tzu or Shih Tzu mix and arrived at the pound lost and was found wandering 16th and South Street here in Lincoln. Her teeth tell us that she's about 1 - 2 years old and that's about all we know about her. Apparently, her previous owners didn't microchip her, come looking for her, or even feed her very well. She weighs about 10.5 lbs. The shelter also had to spay her, which hadn't been done before.

Penny's a very timid dog and was extremely nervous when we visited her Friday night. Then when we introduced Ranger to her, she quickly stopped shaking and she probably thought, "Oh, good, they aren't going to hurt or eat me. They already have a dog and he's looking quite content." That's when we knew she was the one for us.

Deciding on naming this little girl was extremely difficult. If you saw my Facebook post, I received around fifty-four ideas for names. I found a lot of them very cute including Junie B., Latte and Molly. Tyler quickly suggested the name Penny after the Nebraska character in the sitcom "The Big Bang Theory" and eventually he won out. I would have preferred a non-human name, sorry Penny Laschanzky (my scrapbooking friend), but everything suggested to us seemed to sound like a great person name too. I even found a website for top dog names and saw that the name "Penny" comes in 33rd place out of a hundred for dogs. You might want to check it out to see if your name is a popular choice for canines.

I thought I'd try to get some doggie photos, which proved to be a very challenging task.

No longer the "Lone" Ranger and Princess Penny

Oops...another miss!

Finally, two faces!

And if you are curious...Ranger is liking his new friend just fine.