Our Newest Family Member!

After having to give up Pike last year due to his extreme (maniacal) separation anxiety, his difficulty adjusting from country life to apartment life, and the fact that he had begun biting us; I thought it would be a very long time before we added a four legged family member.

Last Thursday, Seth texted me at work to say that he was ready to get another dog, so I pushed my luck and asked if it could be a Gordon Setter. I've wanted one since I was around 13 years old and knew that any dog we did get would have to be from the sporting group. Seth said we should find one before he changed his mind.

Long story short, we found a breeder the same day who not only seemed reputable, but also had two puppies available. The only problem was that the puppy was in Eastern Iowa and the breeder declined to ship him due to the heat. Since the weekend was coming up, we decided to take the boys on a road trip. I went into work an hour early on Friday just for the morning and we left our house around 1:00 pm that afternoon. We had planned on camping in the back of the Jeep the first night and getting a hotel the second, but we forgot how unbearable the Midwest humidity is, so we ended up caving and getting a hotel the first night too.

The closer we got, the more we started to worry that we might have made the wrong decision and jumped into this too fast. After all, we could have spent our weekend camping in the nice, cool mountains and were instead driving through Nebraska and Iowa during the hottest, most humid part of the summer. Not exactly our dream vacation...

We were wrong, of course!

Meet Ruger, our Gordon Setter!

 He turned out to be exactly what we wanted. His breeder, Ron, also raises pigeons and pheasants to train dogs with, so we got to see how the puppies reacted to the birds.

Tucker got to pet a pigeon and thought it was pretty awesome.

 The breeder was calling the puppy "Jack" which only seemed fitting since Jackson had declared that if we got a dog, it should be named Jack. As for temperament, think the opposite of Jackson...

He was definitely the calmest puppy in the litter!

 While we were there, we got to see the puppies from Ruger's aunt. They were adorable!


 Tucker seemed to prefer Ruger's dad the most, though. He's scared of little dogs, but not big dogs. He screams like a girl when a toy poodle jumps on him, but walked right up to a Saint Bernard one day to pet it.Yet anther thing that I do not understand about my strange children.

 The four wheeler won out over the dog in the end and yes, Tucker told me to take this picture.

Ruger is on the right with two of his litter mates.

On our way back, we met Dale and Collette in Omaha, spent the night in a hotel filled with dogs that were attending a nearby AKC dog show (Salukis in a Freightliner van, anyone?), and went to Cabela's for the morning before heading home.

So far, Ruger is the happiest, sweetest little guy ever. He loves his crate and goes right in to sleep at night, he goes to the bathroom in the corner of the yard that we want him to go in, and chews on his toys instead of on our furniture. He's retrieving a little, and loves to explore the yard. Best of all, he doesn't seem to be causing an allergic reaction for Erin.

As Seth put it: "He's so perfect, it's disgusting"!