Heidi

Heidi: The Iron Curtain Puppy

When the chaos in your life hits a momentary lull, don't fret. There are ways to shake things up a bit. If you want to follow my fine example, you could do something irrational like...get a puppy.

And when your husband suggests you check out a breeder just to "get an idea," see if the breed is "right for the family," don't believe him. YOU WILL end up throwing down a deposit.

That's where our puppy adventure began. A couple of months ago, my husband heard about Eastern German Shepherd breeders in our area and we arranged to meet them. We are partial to German Shepherds because of Schuyler, our beloved, immortalized mixed breed we lost three years ago. But Eastern versus Western?

"Maybe they got stuck behind the Iron Curtain," I suggested, and I had the right idea. In the historically renowned “West,” German Shepherds were bread for show while their Eastern counterparts were in the fields working for a living. All Shepherds are strong, loyal, and protective, but allegedly, the ones from the east are calmer, healthier, and easier to train, and don't exhibit some of the negative characteristics like, say, aggression.

I loved Schuyler, but her protectiveness in the wrong situation was a lawsuit waiting to happen. We didn't want to lose her because of it, so we had to be cautious. We ended up losing her anyway to kidney failure. She was only 56 in people years...

So today was the day of reckoning. We were hoping for a calm, submissive female because Draco, the legendary sire, weighs more than I do and has a head the size of a watermelon. That's a lot of dog! The breeder also agreed a female would be best for our young family.

She had one in mind for us, but my husband liked one that was more "pick of the litter" quality-larger, outgoing, the most attractive. She was hard to pass up. We ended up taking the breeder's advice and picked her smaller, meeker sister. 

Heidi is now home and sleeping with her daddy in his man chair. I'm in for a rough night, but it won't be as bad as a newborn baby. That's because I can be the one to roll over, pat my husband on the back, say "good luck with that," and then go back to sleep :)