Love. That. Dog.

Osa is a 12 pound Teddy Bear. That's a fancy way of saying she's an expensive mutt. The first time I met Osa I fell in love with her. Jeff and I had just moved into our new house in a new town. By "just" I mean we moved in on a Friday and brought her home the following Monday. I had been looking at Teddy Bears (shih tzu/bichon mix) at pet stores and kennels for months knowing that I wanted a pup as after we got settled from our move. I hadn't found the right puppy by the time we hopped into the moving truck and for 3 days I was unable to look for my puppy because I didn't have access to the internet. This was before I joined the smart phone world. But the cable guy came to our house that Monday morning and as soon as he left I hopped on the computer to see if any of the locals had a Teddy Bear available since I last looked Thursday. Sure enough, somebody posted pictures of a litter of pups, all adorable that very morning. When I saw the pictures I thought to myself, "That is my girl". I told Jeff about her and that I wanted to go look at her. Jeff had hoped to get a big dog, but with his long work hours he lovingly allowed me to choose the kind of dog I wanted to keep as my companion while he was away. So we made the 40 minute drive to meet the tri-colored doggy. As soon as I met her I knew I wanted to bring her home with us. She was soft and playful and her coat was so sweet. The paper work started flying and I later learned that Jeff was thinking "I thought we were just looking at the dog". We wrote a check, filled out paperwork and brought our little dog home. On the 40 minute trip home I held her in a blanket we kept in the car. She cuddled and then squirmed and chewed on my fingers with her razor sharp teeth all while we tried to think of a good name for our new little pup. We agreed upon Osa. The Spanish word for bear is oso and we thought that since she was a Teddy Bear mix it would fit well. We had to call her Osa though, since she is a girl. Then we stopped off at the pet supply store to pick up the necessities and brought our Osa girl home. She's been such a good little buddy for me, especially when Jeff is at work for long hours. And now I'm watching Osa and Benjamin become friends as Ben feeds her his food from his highchair and they play tug of war. I'll admit that during all of the puppy training, chewing, and whimpering in the middle of the night there were moments that I wondered if we should have taken on the responsibility of a puppy. But here we are with our Osa bear more than 2 years later and she is a well-behaved, playful, cuddly companion and once we got through some of those difficult moment I knew we did the right thing by adding Osa to our family. Love. That. Dog.

On a side note, I highly recommend the book The Art of Raising a Puppy by the Monks of New Skete. Very good advice on how to choose and raise a pup.