Good Dog

Since I gave Celtic bonus face time the other day, I need to give our youngest a little extra online love today as well. Our youngest but biggest munchkin is such a wonderful doggy I just have to sing his praises a little bit. First of all, I completely missed his birthday (observed) on September 1 because we were so consumed with Hope's visit to the surgeon. Our sweet little guy turned 3 years old around that day--I can't believe he's an adult already!

I obviously wanted to wish Fresco a happy b-day, but I also have to share a couple of recent stories to prove how wonderful he is. The first one is from the other day when we were leaving for the first KU game of the season. The little man is still kenneled while we're gone, which we started after he ate the corner of the coffee table last summer, and which we've continued because he really seems to be comfortable in his kennel. He will open the door to let himself in when we're getting ready to leave, and sometimes he'll sleep in his kennel at night just for the heck of it. So the other day when we were getting ready to leave and he could sense it, he just went to his kennel to lay down and wait. It was so sweet I had to take a picture!

The other story is from Labor Day, when Chad and I were bringing in the last of the moving boxes from the garage into the basement. Chad had walked into the house through the garage with an armful of boxes, and since his arms were full he reached back with his foot to close the door behind him. We both went downstairs to put the boxes in storage, and about 5 minutes later we came back upstairs to find the door to the garage wide open with the garage door up--the door to the garage hadn't latched! I heard Chad yell "Oh no!!" and then run out into the garage, where he found an unleashed and uncollared Fresco, who was just wandering around the garage sniffing everything. Had he decided to run, he could have been a half mile away by the time we got upstairs, but our wonderful little man stayed put without any prompting at all. Now I'm sure if he'd seen a cat or dog or person or rabbit or squirrel or any moving creature out in our front yard he would have taken off, but lucky for us, there wasn't much activity in our neighborhood that morning!

Oh--and one more thing: when he doesn't sleep in his kennel, our youngest pup likes to put himself to bed in our closet, where we've opted to put a dog bed so that he'll quit pulling sweatshirts off the shelves to sleep on. How cute is this little guy?

While our lanky little man still has a few issues, for the most part he's well-adjusted, especially considering the first year of his life was so difficult. We love our sweet little Hoxer (Hound/Boxer) and couldn't be happier that he came to be part of our family!