Our newest family member!

Lonnie and I have been on the hunt for a puppy. We have wanted to get a dog for awhile but just haven't gotten one. So we've been looking and reading and watching online to find the one that we want. Because purebreds are so scarce in Crescent City, we thought that we might have a better chance of getting the dog we want if we get it while we're down here in Sacramento. Originally the plan was to get a Staffordshire Terrier because they are known to be very good with kids, and from our understanding our apartment has a 20 lb limit on pets. Well, Staffies can be up to 35 pounds and it made me really nervous that the dog might get too big. See, we have an apartment manager who is perhaps a little bipolar. One day you can be on her good side, the other you're on her bad. And she can make life really difficult if you get on her bad side. So I really don't want to piss her off if I can avoid it. So, we changed our focus and tried to find a dog that would meet the standards. We wanted a dog that was cute, great with kids and patient, and would be under 20 lbs or right around that. We considered a dachshund but they aren't known to be very patient with kids. We ended up stumbling upon the Shetland Sheepdog or Shelties as they are commonly known.
We started looking and found that it was very difficult to find one, especially one for less than $1000. We found a couple of 5 month old pups that were 3 hours away. We strongly considered going to get one or at least go look at them but we found another ad for 8 week old puppies. We called on the smaller puppies and they still had two available. We decided that we'd like to have a smaller puppy because we wanted the pup and Stephen to grow up together. We also didn't want to chance having a dog who had already settled itself into unknown habits. We drove up to Redding on Saturday to take a look at the pups. I fell in love with the smaller of the two right away. I like all things miniature so it made it easy for me. We spent a little time holding and watching each of the pups and decided to go for the smaller one. Stephen did well with them and like he does with everything else he tried to eat the dog. He wanted to hold his ears and grab his fur. We definitely have a ways to go in trying to teach him to be gentle. We talked to the breeder and she was willing to hold the dog for us until next Sat as we drive home. This made things so much easier because it was going to be difficult to figure out keeping a dog in the hotel. We decided to name him Sherman, a name that just popped into my head one day as I was driving. He's such a cute dog and I know that he and Stephen will grow up to be good buddies.