Chad and I both grew up with dogs. Ever since my childhood dog (a beautiful tri-color rough Collie) passed in 2004, I have wanted another dog so bad. After my incessant begging in high school, my dad told me that when I graduated college, he would buy me a dog as a graduation present. Well, I didn't wait to finish college to get married so why would I wait to finish to get a dog?! I stared tossing the idea around with Chad (my husband) and we both decided that we wanted one, but we needed to choose a breed that would thrive in our not-so-spacious one bedroom apartment. After setting up Dogs 101 on our DVR and doing "extensive" research, we narrowed it down to a few breeds. First of all, Chad and I are "big dog" people. I don't care for little "yippy" dogs one bit. While we would love to have a lab, the breed wouldn't exactly "thrive" in our apartment. Okay, so a bulldog then! Oh wait - they cost $2,000. I don't know if your familiar with the term "newlywed budget," but it doesn't typically entail several thousand dollars for a dog and its subsequent care (...at least ours doesn't). Enter the Corgi.
Corgis have been described as "a big dog in a little body." In other words, they are to be trained as you would a Lab or German Shepherd, but females only weigh about 25 lbs. full grown. Perfect! There are two breeds of Corgis - the Cardigan Welsh Corgi and the Pembroke Welsh Corgi. Main visual difference - Cardigans have a tail and Pembrokes do not. Also, Pembrokes are a tad more personable. The Queen of England has 16 Pembrokes! I really thought this could be the breed for us. I did a quick search and found a few breeders in the area. One recently had puppies (about a day or two before I searched) so I told Chad that night that I thought I had found the dog for us (and that I thought we were ready for one). We also contemplated whether or not to adopt. I completely support the adoption of animals and had actually gone to the shelter here in Fort Worth to see if I liked any of the dogs. The problem was that we didn't want a small dog, but still had a small apartment. So why not go through a corgi rescue shelter? As herding dogs, Corgis have a tendency to herd small children and in doing so, they tend to nip. We knew that within a few years, we'll have children and it was important to us both to get a puppy so we could nip this habit in the bud (no pun intended...).
Having decided to go through a breeder, I contacted Wits End Corgi in Poolville, Texas - about 30 minutes NE of Fort Worth (**until November 2010, you should still be able to see her picture along with her brothers and sisters**). Four weeks later we picked out our Emma! Although it's frustrating when she needs to go out at 5:00 AM or she wants to play when you have a huge test to study for ...or waking up with your legs hanging off the bed so she can be in a certain spot, I wouldn't take a thing back!
Here's a few pictures of her first few weeks of life...
Just a few days old
About 3 weeks old
The day we picked her out
51 days old
Today - She was more interested in watching TV than posing...
In closing, buying a puppy was the right choice for us. If you can adopt, I recommend that you do. There are so many dogs out there that need your love. And hey, you may get to pass on the housebreaking routine! Shelter and rescue dogs may not look perfect, but their ability to enrich your life is still there. Emma is not perfect either (she has a bad leg), but that's a topic for a different post....
Thanks for reading and see you next week!
Shelley
Wow! Shelly I can't believe how small she was at first. I agree that adopting is a great thing. We (me and chuck) adopted our chi from a shelter in Dallas but, if we hadn't found what we were looking for there, we would have went to a breeder also.
ReplyDeleteWe love our grandpuppy!!! She is absolutely a perfect little personality. Thanks for letting us share in the entire experience!
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