The First Dog

I have always been a dog person, don't get me wrong I like cats too...but I absolutely hate cleaning litter boxes and hair balls up.  My husband is more of a cat person, he had cats when I met him, he likes dogs too...but he had cats because they don't require that much attention and he was working a lot when I met him.  We have three now, Sampson, Corki and Prada.  When you have cats and you want a dog, you have to get a puppy or a dog that likes cats.  That is where Kensie came into the picture.  

Crew use to foster Weimaraners before I met him.  We actually adopted a 7 year old Weim and he didn't eat cats, we had him for several years before all of the sudden one day, he just laid there, he couldn't get up.  It didn't look good and he weighed to much for me to pick him up, I called my son and he and his wife came and helped get Orion to the vet.  Orion had a lot of issues, but he was a great dog.  After an exam and X-rays I had to make a hard decision, Orion was going on 11 years old and his heart was the size of a football...he had always had problems with heat when we took him on walks, this could have been why.  Crew was in Afghanistan at this time, so I had to make the call...Orion's breathing was labored and shallow he was suffering.  I cried.  I told them to put him out of his suffering.  I stayed with him while he passed on, I talked to him and stroked him until he took his last breath.  I cried like a baby, I cried so hard I shook.

I wanted to wait awhile before we got another dog, Weimaraners have a lot of things that can happen to them.  Orion was was afraid of thunder, had separation anxiety which made him distructive, was an extremely picky eater and was what my husband called a real Velcro dog.  But that is the kind of dog Crew really liked.  We looked at the Weim Rescue for quite a while, not too many Weims get along with cats, we decided on a female if we got another Weim, Orion weighed 125 pounds and was mistaken for a Great Dane a lot of the time.  I wanted a dog I could pickup and could walk without being dragged down the street.

I came across some yellow lab puppies on Petfinders, they were dropped in the middle of the street by someone and at a Foster Home, the adoption was through the shelter though.  They were only five weeks old and had to be weaned and vetted.  But, after talking to Crew, he let me go look...I took pictures and brought them home to show him.  I picked out a cutie, we had to wait to pick her up, but we started trying to figure out a name.  Kensie was very light colored, her name means "the fair one".

Kensie was smart, she was quick to learn things...like going outside to do her business. It was nice having a tiny dog, she was smaller than all of our cats.  Prada and Kensie hung out together, she grew up with cats so she doesn't eat them.  Kensie went with us on our house hunting adventure, she was small so she slept a lot.  We took her up to Arkansas, Oklahoma, all over Texas...she walked around with us on a leash, when we looked at the houses we put her in the kennel.  She practically grew up in the back of the truck.  My niece Michelle took us to look at houses and we brought Kensie then too, it was nice having my niece be a realtor.  We wanted her to sell our house too...things just took too long.

Kensie was our first dog in the country house...but not the last.

Kensie as Co-pilot in the truck

Kensie when we found our place