Purely Pickens: Our Family has Grown (and other weekend updates)

We had another busy and exciting weekend. It started with the fact that I finally found after many online searches what I thought was going to be a great dog for us. We made an appointment to go meet her on Saturday at her foster parents. Ryan and I were both very excited and could hardly wait.

However, before we drove out to meet her I had other things to do.

First, Riley and I went to Dylan's baby pool party. It was fun but Riley was a bit cranky since he only took a 40 minute nap on the way there instead of his normal 2 hour nap. He enjoyed the water but was pretty fussy after I took him out to feed him. Riley slept all the way home and was in a better mood afterwards so I think he was just sleepy. Here are some pictures of him in the pool.

Since the puppy was out in East Texas and we didn't want to trap Riley in the carseat that long, we took him to his Mimi's house. Mimi says he was a good boy and had lots of fun.

Ryan and I drove out to Winnsboro and met with the very nice foster parents who were taking care of the dog I found online. They were currently caring for 18 dogs, 5 of their own and 13 foster. They had an amazing property with lots of land for the dogs to roam and play. (Ryan and I both talked about on the way home how we would like to have a place like that some day)The dogs also got lots of love from the foster parents and their neighbor who helps take care of them. I had mixed feeling about taking a dog away from this awesome situation and from people who obviously loved her but I know we could give her a great life and that meant the foster family would have room to help rescue another dog. We met the dog who they called Carmell and her sister Marlo. They were both sweet but quite frightened of us. We got to interact with them both and really liked them both. We wanted to take both of them but knew with a young baby at home we shouldn't. We decided to adopt Carmell which was the one whose picture I fell in love with online. She is an Australian Shepherd mix and is approximately 6 months old.

On the drive home Carmell was very quiet and calm. She slept most of the time or just watched us. We decided on the way home to name her Ruby. Here is a picture from the car trip home.

The foster family had given Carmel a bath earlier in the day but while we were filling out the paperwork she decided to go take one last swim in the creek on their property. So we took home a sandy, wet dog but that was fine with us. We didn't want to traumatize her too much that night so we waited until Sunday to give her another bath.

Here are some pictures from her bath. She was scared at first but then seemed to enjoy it.

While Ryan was bathing Ruby I decided to go ahead and let Riley try out his new pool with water in it. He really had a blast.

It has only been a couple days but Ruby is really starting to warm up to us. She loves to have her belly rubbed(hence the upside down pictures) and she seems to enjoy the ball we got her and has even played some fetch already. At first being on a leash really freaked her out since she was use to running free all the time but she caught on quick and we have already gone on several walks. She still wont go to the back of the house but I think it is the slippery floor that scares her. Sara had issues with it at first too. She is starting to come out of her shell and get a little braver even acting like a puppy and picking up random thinks to chew on like the remote or baby toys.

She is so gentle and sweet and puts up with Riley very well. She just lays there patiently while he tries to figure her out. As gentle as she is I still stay really close mainly because I don't want him to hurt her or yank out any hair (like he does with me).