How We Got Denali

So, we did a crazy thing.   

Back in October my good friend, Natalie, posted that her poodle mama had just had a litter of 11 goldendoodle puppies.   Now anyone who knows our family well, knows that I have a 16-year-old daughter who is OBSESSED with dogs, so it was with great excitement that she planned a trip to visit the newborn puppy nursery!   

We arrived for our visit when they were a mere 2 days old and they were sooooo tiny!  Their eyes weren't opened yet, they didn't walk, and they mostly just slept and nuzzled around looking for more food from their mama.  

It was a pretty special experience to be in the presence of such young and fresh life...

and, Ellie, in particular, was pretty smitten from that first visit.

It didn't take long before there was a full-court press to adopt one.  We kept going back for visits and Ellie narrowed it down pretty quickly to the purple, the pink, or the black collared one.

Natalie's family went to great lengths to care for all the pups for the several weeks they were in their care.  The pups were weighed multiple times a day, were well-socialized, were exposed to a variety of noises, and her family performed  early neurological stimulation exercises with them daily.   Ultimately, we decided that there was never going to be a better opportunity to adopt well-adjusted, healthy puppies and we decided to go for it. 

Natalie was gracious enough to let us keep visiting and it wasn't too long before we settled on this sweet pup...

   

After some family discussions, we called her Denali and prepared for her to come home with us just before Christmas.

In the meantime, we brought her home for a couple of home visits.  Rocky was very tentative about meeting his new baby sister....

We introduced her to the far away family members over Facetime...

And mostly just loved on her as much as possible...

Here are her parents....

Champ is a 15 lb. goldendoodle.

Mia is a 40 lb. purebred poodle.

They expect the pups will grow to be somewhere between their two sizes. 

On December 22, we finally brought Denali home with us!   As excited as we were for her to finally be an official member of the family, the first couple of weeks were honestly pretty rough.  We had houseguests that meant that our house was chaotic and out of routine.  Then we all got COVID and her energy proved to be extra challenging to keep up with.  The whining all night while we crate trained her was the hardest part of all.   I actually blame being sleep deprived from her whining as one of the contributing factors to us getting COVID in the first place...but things got better eventually.  

Fast forward a month and we've finally gotten to a better place with her presence.  She now sleeps all night in her crate without whining, she is on a good path to being house-trained, and she only annoys Rocky some of the time. 

She is still full of energy and loves to chew everything in sight, but it seems that she is a *little* more chill than some of her litter siblings.  We love the fact that she often sleeps on her back...something Rocky would never do in a million years.  

Having a puppy is a lot of work, but, for the most part, we are having fun with Denali!  She is cuddly, energetic, and loves belly rubs.  

Need some puppy therapy?   Give me a ring!