The "Good News"

Sorry it's taken me awhile to get this posted! I've been very busy--and you are about to see why!

Though our hearts are still heavy from the loss of Quigley, we now have a new fur-baby. While he will not take Quigley's place (and to be honest, we wouldn't want him too!), and our goal was not to 'replace' Quigley, he is helping to fill the empty silence and stillness that pervaded the house in Quigley's absence.

We couldn't stand walking past Quigley's empty crate, or seeing an empty spot in the room where it had been. The timing may seem off to some, but we feel like everything fell into place at the time that it did for a reason. We had been hoping to eventually get a mastiff puppy and they are kind of unusual here (as are most large breed dogs here in Hawaii), I saw an ad on Craigslist and replied to it, and eventually discovered that the man that had the puppies was actually one of my husband's old buddies from here before (they had deployed together years ago). To make a long story short, we got a puppy from them.

He is an English/Italian (or Neapolitan technically) Mastiff mix, and is going to be quite a large fellow when he eventually finishes growing (his daddy weighs about 130 pounds, and we have our suspicions that our boy may surpass him--though he may not).

Anyhow, we brought him home last Tuesday and have decided to name him Copper. We are currently working on housebreaking and other basic obedience training (I'll be glad when we are past this stage!).

Without further ado, here he is:

I will add some more pictures of him later, but I just wanted to 'introduce' him to you! :-)

On a totally random side note--it's hard to believe that Peanut Butter Cup's due date was a year ago today! How time flies!!

I'll be getting a hair cut later today . . . I think I'm going to end up with a hairstyle that is completely different from what I am used to--I normally chicken out at the thought, but this time I'm going to go for it! I'll post before and after pictures soon!

Quigley

You may remember my post several months ago where I mentioned that we weren't going to keep Quigley due to a child-aggression issue. So you were probably confused when I told you later that we had decided to keep him and bring him with us to Hawaii. Please allow me to explain why we made that decision, before jumping to any conclusions. . . .

After we had initially decided that we couldn't keep him, Quigley started to listen to our commands better--and more often--so that gave us hope that we would be able to work with him through his issues. Then the day of my husband's graduation we had a lot of guests . . . a couple of them (one being a small child about the same age as our neighbors' son) decided to go out into our backyard (where Quigley was) to see the cows behind our house. We didn't know they were going out there, or we would have stopped them, but we didn't, so about a minute or two later when we realized they were out there to find Quigley. We were very surprised that he seemed to have kept his distance (despite the intrusion into his territory) and hadn't gone running up to them immediately (whether out of friendliness or aggression since he didn't know either one).

That incident made us think that maybe he would be okay with other kids (aside from our neighbors' child). Plus, I just felt terrible about my husband having to give up yet another one of his pets (he'd always had to do that when he was growing up with the exception of one cat, so I was trying hard to prevent it from happening again).

So, that is why we decided to keep Quigley, and see if we could make it work.

However, since he has been here in Hawaii, he has growled at at least five kids and snapped at one. Honestly though, the child that he snapped at deserved it (don't worry Quigley didn't actually bite him) and I hope he learned a valuable lesson from that incident. We were walking around our neighborhood and the boy--who was holding a really big stick--was running down the sidewalk toward us when he suddenly had the not-so-brilliant idea of trying to pet Quigley (ignoring the fact that my husband was saying "No, no, no, no, no!") as he was running by us. Obviously, Quigley had a good reason to feel threatened, though that still doesn't excuse his response; my husband jerked Quigley back when he leaped at the boy, and I could literally hear Quigley's jaws snap shut. That made the boy stop dead in his tracks a few feet away with a stunned expression and say "I'm sorry." We sincerely hope that he learned a lesson about trying to pet unknown dogs without asking first.

Anyhow, back to Quigley. . . .

We have eighteen children on our street alone, and our community is full of children. Our backyard isn't very secure, which is problematic with all of the kids running around all the time.

Another big issue Quigley has is that he is very picky about other dogs. Same as with children, it is a fear-based aggression. It started when we took him to a dog park one day and he was bullied by a couple of pitbulls the whole time they were there. Before then he had been fine with other dogs, but ever since then he has been very inconsistent. We know that he doesn't like small dogs or puppies at all, and he picks and chooses from adult dogs. Considering the fact that our community also has a very large number of dogs, that just compounds the situation even more.

After talking to the breeder, we had to make the very difficult decision to have Quigley put down. This is the last thing we ever wanted to have happen, but if we sent him back to our breeder (as per her contract with us) he would live out the rest of his life in a kennel (because she can't re-home a dog like him--and he wouldn't be able to be out and about because of the danger he would be to the other dogs and puppies). As of right now we are trying to make Quigley's last few days/week as happy as possible. Please be in prayer for us through these next few days if you think of us. It goes against everything in us to be putting down an animal that isn't sick/in pain/injured with no chance of recovery. We do have some suspicions that Quigley may be developing some health problems, but it still seems so wrong to put down a happy, visibly healthy two-year old dog.

Despite all of the sadness surrounding this whole situation, we do have some good news coming, but that is yet another post which will be coming soon.

We greatly appreciate your prayers for us in this time of sadness!

An Overdue Update!

This may be a rather *long* post, as quite a bit has happened since I posted last. I never intend to 'disappear' from the blogosphere for so long . . . I just get caught up in my daily life and run out of time during the day, then by the time night comes around I'm usually to tired to compose my thoughts into something readable. However, I really should post more often.

Now, on to the update. . . .

The first week of October was quite eventful for my little munchkin--first he learned to wave (he's still working on it, but he has the general idea!), then he learned to associate "SPLAT!" with when he smacks and splatters the food on his highchair tray. On October 3rd he stumbled and fell against a wooden toy box that we have in his play room (and consequently removed from the playroom soon thereafter!) -- that incident resulted in his very first bloody lip (poor Baby!) and a cut underneath his lip as well.  The next day (Oct. 4th) he clapped his own hands (he's been clapping MINE for quite a while, ha ha)! Then on the 6th I was blowing bubbles for him, and he came over to me and said "Buh-buh.' So I think his third word may have been 'bubble'. :-) On the 8th he made it almost all the way across his playroom walking on his own, and he tried walking down the hallway that night before his bath (and even turned a corner!). Now he can walk in circles and turn around! He still loses his balance and plops down, but he is improving every day. Oh, and we can't really put him in his walker much anymore because he can climb out and I'm afraid he's going to fall on his head (I've always gotten him out before he loses his balance, but it's only a matter of time if we keep putting him in there, so I'd rather not chance it). So, that is what Peanut Butter Cup has been up to lately!

Since he figured out the whole clapping thing, he absolutely loves to clap! Oh, and Karissa, you can tell Courtney that she doesn't need to worry too much about him having a lack of rhythm and timing--when he claps to a song he is almost always on beat. :-) He actually clapped while watching Wheel of Fortune October 7th (he saw the contestants clapping and he decided he was going to clap as well--it was too cute)!

This past weekend (along with the past few days) have been hard as we have had to make a difficult decision in regards to Quigley. I will post more about that later, as that is a post in and of itself. Please be in prayer for our family though through the rest of this week as it is going to be a difficult next few days.