By the title of this post you can guess what the big announcement I promised is!  We’ve been talking about adding a third dog to our family for a few weeks now.  We’ve had time to grieve the loss of Bacardi and feel ready to welcome a new heeler to our home.  For us, pets are family and that means they stay until their last days so we always make sure that any new addition will get along with our other fur babies and be able to adapt to our busy lifestyle before we commit.

We started looking around locally for a young heeler that we could adopt who would be a good fit.  Since most heeler owners in Alaska brought their dogs here from the lower 48 and cherish them dearly there aren’t many who end up needing a new home.  Although we found a couple, there wasn’t a perfect match so we started looking at breeders as well.  We contacted several and found one that we liked in Oregon, just a few hours from the hub’s mom’s house.

This breeder matches puppies with new families based on personality and what is desired from the pet – companion, working dog, etc.  She had just had a litter of pups when we contacted her so we put our name on the list and eagerly awaited the puppies 4 week birthday when the breeder starts to pair pups with prospective families.  Luckily, because we were very open in what we wanted we were matched with this adorable female blue heeler, who will be joining our family Mother’s Day weekend!  How perfect is that?!

The hubs and I will fly down to pick her up and have a quick visit with his mom while there.  The breeder has already been taking the pups on car rides and starting house breaking with good success so hopefully she will adapt quickly to us and her new siblings.

While we wait we’re trying to decide on a name to continue our alcohol theme.  A few of the current contenders are Brinley (from Brinley’s Goldcoast Rum), Brandy and Julep.  We’ve also considered Grenadine, Hennessey, Disaronno, Grigio, Kahlua and Chardonnay but decided they don’t quite fit her.  I also like the names Mojito and Martini but they both sound like names for small dogs to me.  We’re still considering other options so if you have a suggestion we’d love to hear it, especially if it’s rum related since that’s my alcohol of choice on the rare occasions we do drink!  It is pretty ironic that we have alcohol named pets since we aren’t big drinkers, but they are strong lickers! 🙂