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While walking my dog this morning I thought it would be fun to tell you about our newest family member. He has been with us a year as of July 20th. He turned a year old April 18th. It was hard for us to decide to get a dog. We had our hands full with little ones so getting a dog seemed out of the question. When Denny wasn't able to get a brother to rough around with we thought maybe a dog would be a good idea. We could have gotten a dachund for free but I was afraid that it would get hurt in our house. I thought about Jack Russel terriers (I love Wishbone) but it still isn't quite the right size for our brood. I found out from a friend about a homeschool family not too far away that had bred their Golden Retriever with a Poodle and therefore had the very trendy (and expensive) Golden Doodles. I was sold on the fact that they are hypo-allergenic (at least that is what they think) and Golden Retrievers have a good reputation with kids. We decide to go see the one last pup this family had. He kind of looked gangly. He was 3 months old and was going through his "awkward, teenage years." We loved him anyway and after a couple days of praying about it we figured he'd be our new pet. The tricky part was that even though he was only 3 months old he was huge! When I heard a cross between a Golden Retriever and Poodle--I thought little poodle. I didn't think of a poodle that is 3 foot tall at the shoulders! At least he would be durable and able to tolerate all of the loving the kids was going to give him. We had to come up with a name. Since it was July we thought a patriotic name would be appropriate. We already have a George in the house--our cat. It didn't take us very long to settle on Quincy--a cool patriotic name. It was funny when I took him to the vet for the first time. We go to an old country vet--he is down to earth and sweet in a farmer sort of way. He takes one look at the dog and asks--"How old is he?" I reply, "Three months the 18th." "Are you sure?" "Yes, in fact he is losing his baby teeth." The poor dog already was the size of most full grown dogs. During that same visit he had been in the waiting room seated close to Grace in her stroller. Another dog leaned in to sniff at Grace's shoe. Quincy growled a low growl. The owner said "Oh, look at that! He is protecting his owner!" I was impressed and his value went up a whole lot, part of why I wanted a dog was for him to look out for my little ones when they are playing. He also has been great when Paul travels, I don't have to lay in bed wondering if I heard something downstairs. If Quincy is sleeping, I know it is safe for me to be sleeping. He has been also quite useful when door to door salespeople come to the door. Quincy is a bit intimidating and they step back when Quincy and I answer the door. He's been a great pet (other than the little incident of chewing the cable wire the day before the championship football game that Mt. Union was playing--it was snowing like crazy that day so Time Warner Cable pretty much laughed at us when we called for them to repair the line. Paul was able to patch the line with electrical tape but Quincy just about had to find a new home that day.) Quincy is the only one in this house who is happy to see me at 7 a.m. and willing to go for a walk in our neighborhood when it is only 10 degrees out! He walks with me everyday. He keeps me honest, I can't skip a day b/c he will follow me all over the house wiggling and wagging excited that I'm up. If I'm up in the morning, he assumes I'm up to take him for a walk. Well, he is partly right, I get up to walk him every day b/c I know he is downstairs waiting for me to take him out. It is our little morning ritual. It gets me good exercise and time to pray and reflect on my day and it gets a little of his energy burned off. Like I often say, "Boys and dogs are meant to be outside." He has been a great protector and he has been a buddy for Denny. They wear each other out. Quincy is obsessive compulsive about tennis balls so we can easily wear him out by throwing them out in the yard for him. He aerates the grass at the same time but Paul doesn't buy that. He's a good dog and I'm thankful we have him. Here is some of my fav pics of our "lil" guy.
Hannah with Quincy in December.
Grace with Quincy in December. My all-time favorite picture of Quincy. He was catching a snowball that the kids were throwing. They didn't start out throwing snowballs at him but when they were throwing them at each other they realized that Quincy wanted in on the action. They started tossing them to him. I couldn't believe I was able to catch this shot considering how bad the delay is on our digital camera.
For those of you that play tennis, Quincy would love a donation of "flat" tennis balls. I guess that is what the tennis folks call the balls when they are no longer good for tennis. We were at a park last summer and saw a guy actually throwing away a whole bag of tennis balls. I was apalled when I realized how happy my pooch would be with those balls that he was throwing away. He was kind enough to give the ones he hadn't thrown away yet to me for my dog. We were able to "recycle" what someone else saw as just garbage. See, it was my "green" moment. LOL Thanks for reading about my poochie. I do enjoy him although I thought for a good number of years I could never come to love another dog after my childhood dog, Spanky, died. I'm glad too that our kids will have great childhood memories of their dog like I do of mine.
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He fertilizes the grass too but that is a different story altogether. 
This is Rebekah with Quincy when we first got him in July 2007. That is a three month old puppy sitting beside an eight year old girl. :)
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