The story of a Duke, a Dom and their Rufus.

Before I met my better half, I was contemplating getting a pet. I wanted a companion so bad. But I wasn't sure how this would have really worked out at the time. I lived with 2 other girls and they didn't really care about anything else other than themselves. Looking back now, I'm very happy the puppy came much later.

After living with the better half for about a year and a bit, we finally looked in to getting a pet. We did personality assessments, researched many breeds and looked up many reviews and narrowed it down to 3.

1. Golden Doodle
2. Portuguese water dog
3. Wheaten Terrier

We decided to get a Wheaten terrier. We love the breed's personality traits and overall look. We didn't think this was going to be a high maintenance dog, but boy were we in for a surprise. There was the slight grooming factor we never really took seriously. But you know what? It isn't really an issue anymore. (save this for another post)

We called several local breeders and had not so good luck with them. The asking prices were well above what we could afford and there were also waiting lists for puppies that crept over a year of waiting. We didn't want to wait one year. We were dead set in getting a family pet by the fall. So the search went on until we found a website called "next day puppies"..

Ok, before I keep going with my little story, I know what you all are going to say… what the hell were you thinking?

Trust me when I say we did our homework. Buying locally would have cost us upwards to $1700 + vet bills.. And this would have guaranteed us a show dog and a certified pure breed stud (and to add insult to ingury.. a guaranteed crater sized hole in our budget). For one, we weren't ready to fork up that much money for a pet. And second of all, we didn't care about the show dog status.. All we wanted was a healthy pet we could spoil, love and call our own.

We narrowed it down to 3 breeders all located in the US that offered the breed for a more affordable price. We ended up interviewing all 3 breeders over the phone and asked for references before putting deposits down. I'm glad we did this, because 2 of the 3 did not rate very well overall. The people we called were all pleased with their dogs but something didn't seem right. The breeders were not registered and some of the vet documents were either missing or never provided (which apparently caused quite a raucous when it came time to vaccinate the pets).

The breeder we ended up picking, passed with flying colors. They gave us as many references as we wanted, most importantly from Canada which ended up being great for us! We were able to ask them questions about travel, paying duties on the dog when they crossed the border, what happens if the animal isn't in good health.. All the important stuff checked out. This put our minds at ease.. After a hilarious struggle with payment (which involved moving funds from 3 different accounts) we finally had a travel date set for our little guy.

Rufus in his crate at the airport

I remember being late picking him up from the airport in Syracuse, about a 3 hour drive from where we live. There was a little crate waiting behind the American airlines counter and we knew he was inside. The poor thing was covered in his little accidents and smelt reallllly bad, but we didn't care. He made it in 1 piece and in complete health. He was painfully shy the first time we took him out of his crate outside the airport. We held him like a little baby, and his little claws would come out and latch on to us every time a plane flew off the tarmac.. He kept trying to get back into his crate.. It was quite funny for me at the time, I had never really had a young pup like him before. Little did I know, the "fun stuff" was about to start.

More to come...