Saturday, February 9, 2013

Zora

As some of you know by now, we have a small addition to our little family. Her name is Zora and she's four months old. No, we did not go out and adopt a baby, Zora is a dog!

We started talking seriously about a dog again when we came back from Europe, and we've been regular visitors of the Humane Society lately. Part of it was to make sure that Nolan would also be comfortable with dogs, and of course to see if there was anything that piqued our interest. We'd been checking the website as well. Regularly I might add... And a little puppy showed up about a week and a half ago. But of course, puppies are popular and within a few hours she was listed as 'adoption pending'. Fine, we were not too sure about a puppy anyway. But the next day, she was still there, and available for adoption.  That was Thursday, and by the end of the day, she was 'adoption pending' once again. By then we were sure that someone had picked her and would give her a good home. Well low and behold, by Friday evening she was available again. We'd decided to go to the Humane Society first thing Saturday morning to check her out, but more to reassure ourselves that she was not the puppy for us (we've thought before we thought the right dog, but then saw it in person and it was not 'our' dog. Well, Zora was different. It was pretty much love at first sight (but then, who doesn't love puppies?!?!). She was much smaller than we had anticipated. On the website she was listed as a German Shepherd/ Shiba Inu mix. So we expected a pretty stocky dog type. But she was anything but that. She was small, thin but fairly long legs and skinny. But super cute and friendly! When we met her and spent some time with her, we both fell in love with her. So when Nolan said that maybe we should look into adopting her, who was I to say no?? I really wanted to make sure that he was comfortable with it, since it's a pretty big commitment for both of us, especially a puppy. So we started the adoption process, but decided to pick her up on Monday so we would have time to get the house ready, and not rush into it by picking her up end of day Saturday (we couldn't pick her up on Sunday).

Since she's not house trained we bought a crate to help with the house training, and a pen to give her extra space when we are home, and to give Zora and the cats a chance to get to know each other without direct contact right away.

So far things are going really well. The cats are adapting, especially Murphy is very curious and spends a bit of time every morning and evening checking Zora out in her crate or pen. Fertile is a bit more shy, but she's the type of cat that if a dog is too close, she'll let them know so we're not too worried about her. They both seem very relaxed, and are doing much better than we'd anticipated. It probably helps that Zora is just a puppy (and a small one), so she's not too intimidating. And she doesn't bark or get excited when she sees the cats, so that helps as well.

The house training is going well too. She seems to be picking it up quickly. Nolan and I are taking turns being on 'puppy' duty, which really means working from home, and getting up at night, but she's worth it. And we're both lucky that we can work from home (especially me). My boss is a big dog fan, and most of the people I work with are not in Ottawa anyway, so it's very easy to work from remote locations (i.e. home).

Of course some pictures:














We had a pretty big snow storm yesterday (which was great because now all the holes underneath the fence are covered so she doesn't have to be on the leash in the back yard anymore), and by the end of the day, we had so much snow that Zora pretty much had to swim through it. But it didn't slow her down! She is incredibly fast, and loves to explore the world. My mom said that she might be (part) whippet. It would definitely explain her small paws and physique, as well as her speed and her quiet character (when she's not playing!). It means that she might make a really good running partner! Anyway, we are very happy with her, and think she's a great addition to our family.

 Talking about running... We haven't done much of that lately. It's partly the weather, travelling, busy lives, now a dog, but we're planning on getting back into it soon :)

Everything else is going well, so there is not much else to report on!

2 comments:

  1. Nogmaals gefeliciteerd met jullie nieuwe gezinslid!

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  2. Dank je Claudia! We zijn er erg blij mee, en ze past goed bij ons :)

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