Meet Our New Puppy, Piper!

Many of you probably remember that we lost our beloved dog, Emma, earlier this year. We miss her so much and always will - she was the best dog we could ever ask for. Having said that, we knew that we would want another pet fairly soon. For the last several weeks, I have been scouring Petfinder and researching various breeds on the internet. It felt like such a big decision and we wanted to find just the right dog to fit into our family.

Last week, we adopted a puppy from our local humane society. She is a blue heeler-beagle mix (we think) and only about 2.5 months old. Her coloring is so pretty and unique.

It took us several hours to agree upon a name. I lobbied hard for "Eleanor" but no one else would go for it. Then, my daughter and I tried to convince the boys that we should name her "Luna" - that failed, too. We finally all decided that "Piper" was a good name and we went with that.

Piper weighs just under 7 lbs - having a tiny dog running around is hard to get used to. Our other dog was around 75 lbs so we are not used to having to watch where we step and keep up with this tiny little creature hanging around our feet. And, it's been awhile since we had a puppy, so the chewy-nippy stuff is something we are dealing with as well.

She's a funny little puppy and we have nicknamed her "Hyper-Piper" - she basically has two modes right now: 1) Sound asleep and calm or 2) Crazy-running around-nipping at our feet- hyper. Blue heelers are cattle dogs and I swear, I think she's already trying to herd us, LOL! It's too soon to know what her personality is going to turn out to be, but, she seems to be happy and content in her new home. Her biggest issue is the chewing - she wants to chew at everything! She does very well in her crate; settles right down with barely any crying or complaining. The potty training is going okay. She has her share of accidents but almost always goes when we take her outside. We are attempting to teach her to ring a bell on our back door when she needs to go out. We did that with our other dog and it worked out great.

My 14 year old son, Connor, seems to be her favorite. One of her favorite things to do is follow him around and cuddle up with him wherever he's at...

She's a real cutie and I'll be sure and keep you posted on how she's doing.