Finlay fone home

For those of you who don't know, we've been trying to rescue a Golden Retriever for a while now. After all those years of renting, and a long year in this house saving to finish our landscaping, the planets have aligned and we're ready for a new family member.

The rescue effort turned out to be an unfortunate sequence of misdirected hopes and heartbreaking disappointments. Even after recruiting mom to the effort in Arizona, it seemed that we wouldn't be rescuing an appropriate dog any time soon.

But, thanks solely to the stalwart persistence of my mother, we have found our new son. He is from a breeder in Arizona and he is now at a slumber party at Grandma's house, awaiting us to come pick him up this weekend. Beyond his unreal good looks and impeccable pedigree, the price for him is unheard of. Easily a quarter of what we could expect for a dog of this caliber and only slightly more than what we'd have to pay for a rescue. And early indications are that this dog is no lemon.

Sydney worked up a short list of candidate names this morning so that mom could begin conditioning the dog to it. (The dog is aligned to Sydney as the cat is to Emelie.) Polo is now christened Finlay, which is Gaelic for "fair-haired soldier." And here are pictures of the chivalrous soul.









Trust me, there will be MANY more to come.

We're registered at PetSmart if you want to buy shower gifts. (I'm kidding...Lord knows there probably is a registry there.)

We're out of our minds with excitement. I've never heard so many coos and giggles echoing around this house as we go over every nuance of these pics...from rubber nose to noble eyes to lion paws. It will be a long week's wait until we can bring him home, but we've waited a long time already. One more week will be WELL worth it.