As many of you know, our first dog, Pudge passed away last summer.
Then sometime last November, I found myself perusing dogs on Craigslist hoping to find another dog to add to our family. At the time though, nothing worked out and after several closed doors, I eventually let the idea go. Who wants to be trying to housebreak a puppy when it's snowing outside anyway? Not me! Plus having just one small dog was nice and easy and I was enjoying that.
Then at the beginning of this summer, we went down to Florida and stayed with my in-laws who had gotten a new puppy since the last time we'd seen them. And their new pup, Charlie and Max had the best time playing together. I came home from that trip pretty much convinced that we needed another dog. Tim, however, was not so convinced.
Every morning, I would check Craigslist for new dogs. But each time I showed Tim a dog I found, he was just not that interested. Until one day in early July, I saw this ad
Her name was Bailey. She was part French Bulldog, part Pug and Beagle. Her family loved her, but the kids were allergic to her, so they had decided that they needed to find a new home for her. She grabbed our hearts from the beginning because she looked so much like a mini-Pudge. She was the first pup that Tim was interested in at all, so I contacted the owners and we set up a time to go meet her the next morning. The only problem was that the owners were asking a pretty hefty re-homing fee that was more than we wanted to pay. But we were hoping that they'd be willing to negotiate the price once they met us and saw that we would give their puppy a loving home.
The next morning, after meeting Bailey, Tim and I decided to make a decent offer and hope for the best. The husband called his wife (who wasn't there with us) and she didn't want to accept our offer. She said there were a few other people who were interested in Bailey, so she wanted to wait. And since we didn't have a peace about offering any more money, we just asked them to let us know if things didn't work out with anyone else. I felt at peace about it; knowing that God was in control and if it was supposed to work out for us to have Bailey, then it would.
For the next week, every time my email dinged, I hoped and prayed it was Bailey's owners contacting us. But after a few weeks of not hearing anything, I assumed she was sold and I started looking for another dog. But even as I looked, nothing grabbed my heart like Bailey did.
Then one Monday morning in the beginning of August, I was doing my usual morning check on Craigslist for dogs when a new ad for Bailey popped up. My heart leaped and I immediately texted Tim (who was out of town) and asked him if we should contact them again. He was completely on board, so I emailed the owners and just said we really loved Bailey and would like to try to reach an agreement with them on the price.
This time, the wife emailed me back and said they would be willing to meet us in the middle on the price. At this point, it felt like God had opened the door back up and was giving us the go-ahead, so we agreed on the price. Then I asked the wife if we could get Bailey the next day. She emailed back late that night and said that they were going out of town the next morning and wouldn't be back until Thursday night, so we could get her on Friday morning.
This sounded a bit odd to me, (were they taking the dog? why would you list a dog on Craigslist right before you were going out of town? were they going to pay to board her while they were gone?) but what could I say? So I just agreed we would wait and get her Friday morning. Tim was going to be coming back in town late Thursday night, so it would be nice that he could go with us to get her. Plus Friday was the day before my birthday, so I felt like God was giving me a birthday puppy.
All week long, the kids and I talked about Bailey. We went to Target and got a collar for her and a dog bowl. I ordered a name tag with our phone number on it to put on her collar. And we counted down the days to Bailey.
On Thursday night, when I was tucking the kids in to bed, they were so excited. They kept saying, "This is like Christmas! Tomorrow we're getting Bailey!".
I went to bed feeling a tad wary because I hadn't heard anything from Bailey's owners, but figured no news from them was good news. I had my phone on my nightstand that night because Tim hadn't made it home from his trip yet. At midnight, my email dinged. Thinking it was possibly Bailey's owners, I checked it. It was the wife and basically she said they had changed their minds. She said their kids were so upset when they broke the news to them and it seemed that their allergies hadn't been as bad lately. They felt like Bailey was a part of their family and they just couldn't bear to part with her.
Ugh. This was not the news we wanted to hear.
I forwarded the email to Tim, who was almost home at that point and then I laid in bed feeling like I had gotten punched in the gut. I felt awful, so sad, mad and disappointed, and I hated thinking of how we were going to break the news to the kids the next morning.
When we told the kids, there were some tears and a lot of disappointment. What was supposed to be a very exciting and fun day turned out to be a sad and hard day for all of us. We reminded the kids though that if Bailey wasn't the puppy for us, then God had something better and we could trust Him.
Up until we found Bailey, I was just looking for a dog and I didn't really know what I wanted. But after Bailey, I realized how much I liked French Bulldogs (she was part French Bulldog). But Frenchies are literally thousands of dollars, which is way out of our dog budget. Plus Tim didn't really like French Bulldogs, but during this process, he realized how much he liked English Bulldogs. At least we could agree on the bulldog part.
As the weeks went by, my desire for a bulldog puppy got stronger and stronger and I couldn't even have told you why. It didn't make a lot of sense even to me but I was feeling so impatient. I was constantly searching for bulldog puppies all over the internet and everywhere I looked was a closed door. Finally, one Saturday, Tim found a breeder of Shorty Bulls on Facebook. We had never heard of Shorty Bulls, but after looking into them, we felt like one might be a good fit for us. The breeder was just a few hours from us and he had one puppy left. Tim contacted him and it worked out that he was available to meet with us the next day.
Well, we fell in love with that puppy from the moment we met him and we brought him home that night.
His grandmother is a French Bulldog (what I wanted) and his dad is an English Bulldog (what Tim wanted). So I feel like we got the perfect mix for us. He also reminds us so much of Pudge in both his looks and personality. It took us a while, but we finally settled on the name Tuck.
Don't let his sweet face fool you though, he's quite the handful and I constantly feel like I have a toddler again. I can't let him out of my sight for even a minute or he gets into things he shouldn't. He's stubborn, cuddly, sweet and clumsy. He snorts like a pig and charges like a bull.
And that wrinkly face is so irresistible! We're head over heels in love with him and we know he's the pup for us.
And the funny thing is that Bailey's owner called a week after we got Tuck and said they were ready to sell Bailey to us (apparently the wife had just been having a hard time letting go). Of course we told them we already had a puppy and weren't interested in Bailey anymore.