Introducing Rosie!

I shared a photo on Instagram and Facebook earlier this week of a sweet little face that I said is now a member of our family. A sweet little face that makes us the owners of three sweet little faces, one of which is already an over-sized handful by himself. This may seem like an odd choice for a couple who is 23 weeks pregnant with their first baby, but a whole lot of thought and prayer took place in the last couple months and when the opportunity to snatch her up came along it seemed like the perfect answer.

At our friends' house, before bringing her home

The dilemma started last summer when we were pregnant with Sam and thought we were starting to notice some decline in Zuriel. He's 7 and a half years old, which doesn't sound like reason for concern but the average age for Boxers is only 8-10 years and he's never been 100% healthy. We knew that if something happened to him we would need to get another dog almost immediately because of how hard it would be on Captain. He'd be miserable, and he'd probably in all honesty drive me insane because he needs an outlet so badly. When we got pregnant with Sam the discussion started because I didn't want us to find ourselves in a situation where we were having to get a puppy for Captain while I had a newborn. Scratch that: I refuse to have a puppy and a newborn at the same time. (Keep in mind that my only newborn puppy experience is Captain, and that was the epitome of an unpleasant experience.) But time passed, we lost Sam, and Zuriel is still with us a year later. It definitely seemed like we jumped to a worst case scenario last time...except...now Zuriel is a whole year older, and he has slowed down so much Captain was losing his mind. Zuriel just can't keep up with Captain anymore - not for lack of trying - and even though they still do their fair share of running around and antagonizing the neighbor's dog, it's not enough for Captain. He was getting antsy, barking all the time and struggling to get any of his energy out. I took him on long walks to wear him out as often as I could, which helped Captain but made Zuriel jealous because of all the extra attention his brother seemed to be getting (dog politics are rough). We started talking about whether we needed a third dog for Captain again, and got an elderly dog panel done on Zuriel to get a better idea of how he is really doing health-wise. The results didn't tell us much: "some of his numbers are higher than they should be and some of his numbers are lower than they should be, but we're not concerned about. There are crystals and a high pH in his pee but we don't know why so we recommend getting the test done again in 6 months." (This is where I don't say how I feel about vets and they money they take from me for such little results.) So we didn't really have any more direction, and we continued to have the back and forth, round and round discussion of all the possible pros and cons we could think of. We ended up arriving at the concept of a slightly older puppy - about 6 months was our thought - so we could skip most of the potty training and still be able to mold them and train them before the baby comes. When our good friends posted a picture of their adorable puppy who they love but needed a new environment (one without chickens to kill and pet bunnies to mangle), it didn't take much of a conversation to know we wanted her. Within a couple days we had driven to VA Beach to see our friends and pick our little spitfire up.

 Tiny Rosiegirl is about 7 months old, a Boxer/Bulldog mix, and weighs 51 pounds which puts her as the smallest by far of the Moore pups (Zuriel is right under 70 pounds and Captain is pushing 80 pounds). Because of her age she may not get much bigger, but size doesn't seem to matter much with this one. She's sweet and cuddly and very protective, but she is also feisty feisty feisty. Zuriel is successfully pulling off the Grumpy Old Man act and intimidating her but she's officially winning in the Rosie vs. Captain dominance battle. She's chased him across the room because he started chewing on a bone and snapped at him for playing with her toy, and he is currently unwilling to walk near her without cowering. It's a little bit ridiculous, actually. I must have told him to "be a man" at least eight times yesterday. But they also have moments where they're able to run and play and wrestle and I think with time their relationship will look more like that consistently.

It's kind of funny that she's a flashy brindle just like Zuriel...her face just looks so dark in comparison to our super gray old man. And she's a lot smaller than him, although it's been hard to capture size comparisons in photos yet. They don't really stop moving long enough.

Some quick Rosie facts:

• She's faster than Captain. It's true, I don't have any idea how it's true because Captain is as fast as a freak of nature and his legs are about twice as long as hers, but it's true. She's literally faster than him. It's terrifying. 
• She jumps when she's excited. High. Girl hit my shoulder with her head yesterday morning when I let her out of the crate. She also does a kind of run-and-jump into the doorknob when she wants to be let inside, which is gonna have to stop because I'm not repainting that door anytime soon. 
• She wiggles more than Zuriel when she's happy...I didn't think it was possible to wiggle more than Zuriel. 
• She's officially afraid of Zuriel - he laid in the door way to the mudroom yesterday afternoon so she couldn't go in and eat or drink, which is just obnoxious but kind of how he runs things - but she'll wear him down eventually. 
• She's mostly potty trained. She did have one and a half accidents in the house yesterday but one was our fault because we didn't let her outside soon enough after letting her out of the crate. And we were warned (by our friends' 4 year old son): "Rosie poops and pees in the house!" I can take a little bit of pee while she adjusts but poop is officially not allowed. I've told her; she's aware. 
• She's apparently a genius. The pups were all fighting all morning over the toys and treats scattered around the family room, so when they went outside I picked it all up and put it in the doggy basket in a different room. I'd never showed Rosie the basket, but when I let her inside later on she immediately went right over to it and took out a bone. It took Captain NINE MONTHS to figure that basket out...it took Rosiegirl about nine seconds. Not sure whether that says more about Rosie or Captain. 
• She's very protective, and didn't let me out of her sight for almost the whole day yesterday. She just followed me in and out of rooms as I cleaned and picked things up, and when I would stop moving for a while she would park herself as close to me as she physically could be and wait for me to move again. Captain isn't really a fan of this, since she's stealing all his favorite cuddle places. 
• She's a rock star in the crate training arena (memories of 10 week old Captain that have haunted me for a year and a half are finally fading away) and she's about 8 for 10 on the "sit/break" combination at the door. She definitely learns quick.
• It's possible that she wants to get to our neighbor dog even more than her brothers...it's only day 2 and her face is successfully scratched up from the fence battles.

She's super sweet, super cute, and figuring out her place in this family quickly. It's possible that we're crazy adding another dog to the mix with a baby coming in approximately 17 weeks, but it's the kind of crazy that's covered with prayer and that we feel really confident and comfortable with. We both have a pretty strong "the more the merrier" mentality when it comes to our family, and we want to foster and grow that as much as possible. So if Zuriel is only with us for another month, then I'm glad we have Rosie now to help Captain with the transition...and if he's with us for another two or three years (which we would obviously prefer) then we will have three dogs and a baby and a beautiful fenced yard to make everyone happy.

Come visit and get some sweet tiny Rosie cuddles!