A little more than a week ago I had an interesting change of perspective. I started to feel like I was being selfish for dwelling on Cooper's passing. We have room in our family to give a dog a home and I started to think maybe the best way to honor Cooper (and Maddie, who passed away in March) was to rescue another dog. I hopped on PetFinder and pretty quickly honed in on one. He's a 3 year old, 37lb schnauzer/lab mix. I called the shelter Thursday morning and when I told the lady who answered the phone which dog I was calling about she absolutely lit up - and yes, he was still available. The whole family drove up to Winamac, IN just after lunch to meet him.
We all fell in love. He really is a total sweetheart. He was as gentle as could be with the kids and wanted to make friends with all of the other dogs in the other pens outside. He came up to greet me and my wife and leaned into both of us when we pet him. Sold. After a bit of paperwork we brought him home.
Here he is the first night home -
We've taken him all over the place so far, starting with my son's baseball game on Saturday morning. He got a bit excited and probably overwhelmed at times, but considering it was basically his second day with us, he did unbelievably well. He was an angel at lunch afterward, I think two of the servers were ready to take him home.
It's not been 100% roses. He's bonded with all of us crazy quickly, but especially with me. I love it, but also I basically can't leave the room without him following me. He's doing well at home out of his crate, though, and it seems to be easing slightly day by day. We're less than a week in, I'm sure he won't be like this forever. He also has a bad mouthing habit that he only seems to do with me. It's not severe, but it's going to take some training to work out.
I still miss Coop like crazy, but I'm glad to have a new running buddy. Gotta run a little faster to keep up with this one.
was not into the Star Wars reference, so we ended up settling on Charlie as it was close enough to not confuse him. I actually thought Chewy was a great name for him but can’t imagine him not being Charlie now.
never thought about it before, but I do think it's nice hair 
