Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Why "Peeta"?

Okay, so why did we choose to name our new puppy "Peeta"? Well, there is the obvious reason that my husband and I are likely fans of the Hunger Games books--which we are...if you haven't read the books yet I highly recommend them...the writing is fantastic and the books explain a whole lot more than the movie(s). I love, love, love, LOVE the books. Anyhow, I digress....

There is another reason though...while my husband and I were trying to come up with potential names I was completely stumped--which usually doesn't happen to me, I'm usually overflowing with literary, mythological, movie, or just plain random names as possibilities for whatever creature we are trying to name. This time around though my brain just wasn't cooperating. Then I was looking at pictures of Peeta (the puppy--not the character, ha ha) and I mentioned to my husband how much he reminded me of Petie the Border Collie mix I'd grown up with....

This is Petie from 2006 I believe...he was about 14 years old in this picture. I think the similarities are in the eyes or the expression....
Petie was pretty much the best dog to ever walk the face of the earth. Okay, so *maybe* he might have some competition out there from a few other dogs, but he was always the perfect dog for my sister and myself and he set a precedent for all other dogs I've known/had that has been hard for any of them to live up to. I miss him dearly and am so grateful to have been blessed with such an incredible dog to grow up with (we found him on the side of the road when I was 4 years old...the vet said he was about 6 months old then and he lived to the ripe old age of 18).

Anyhow, that was another rabbit trail...sorry about that, ha ha.

Sooooo, I joked that we could name our new puppy Petie too (totally not serious), and that is when we thought of Peeta. :) We did decide that our 'back-up name' would be Finnick (ha ha ha ha!), but we were pretty sure it would stay Peeta, and now after having had a little over a week with Peeta to get a feel for the name, it's going to stick. It fits him and in a way it's a tribute to my beloved Petie.

So, that is how we ended up with that name...it's not because we are obsessed Hunger Games fans--there is more meaning behind it than meets the eye. ;)

Photobucket

Monday, August 12, 2013

Our New Furbaby....

I would have posted earlier but this past week has been a bit chaotic as we have all been adjusting to having a puppy again (aka: lack of decent sleep due to the puppy crying for varying lengths of time in his crate at night).

Anyhow.... The day we actually got him did not go as planned. He was supposed to be on a flight that left Denver, CO in the morning and would then arrive in Atlanta, GA mid-afternoon, but apparently his original flight had a gate change and he ended up being taken to the wrong gate and therefor missed the flight he was booked on. By the time we found that out though we were already close to 3 hours into our 4 hour drive to Atlanta, so after talking with his breeder we decided that the best option was to put him on the only other direct flight that was coming to Atlanta that day--which would put his arrival time at 9:00...leaving us with 7 hours to kill in the meantime.

After brainstorming for a while, my husband suggested that we could go to the aquarium in Atlanta since we hadn't ever gotten the opportunity before while we were here in Alabama for flight school. The aquarium currently has a program (for the summer I think) that sounded pretty cool with discounted tickets from 6-9pm each (?) day. That put us at the right time since we were told it would take the airline 30 minutes to an hour after his flight landed for them to unload him and have him ready for pickup.

Since we still had a few hours to pass before we could go to the aquarium we went to a health food grocery store (our first opportunity to go to this particular store since we left Hawaii as there seems to be a lack of market for anything healthy/organic down where we are...bummer). After that we walked a bit farther down the row of stores in the shopping center and stopped in at a big-name pet store...Munchkin loves to see all of the animals and fish in those stores--it's like a trip to the zoo AND the aquarium to him, ha ha.

By the time 4:30 rolled around we realized we'd been looking at the clock in our Jeep and that it was actually 5:30 since the Jeep clock has to be manually set...we started to make our way to the aquarium and the closer we got to that area the worse and worse the traffic became.

To make a long story short, apparently there was a concert taking place that night very close to where the aquarium is and there were TONS of people there for it and parking was few and far between as well as ridiculously expensive. When we were finally able to make our way to the aquarium's parking garage we saw a sign saying that the aquarium would be closing at 6pm that night. Boy was THAT disappointing, lol.

We kept waiting to see that the flight had departed Denver, but they kept getting delayed due to terrible weather that was preventing them from being able to take off. The flight finally left around 8:30pm (Mountain Time) and it arrived in Atlanta around 12:30am (EST). Thankfully, the airline people had him off the plane and ready to be picked-up in 20 minutes or less, so that made our day/night a little shorter.

Finally getting to see our new puppy for the first time in person was a pretty exciting moment! After a quick water, food, and potty break for him it was finally time to head home. We arrived home around 4:00am CST and after getting everyone settled in their beds we all hit the sack--for about 2 1/2 hours, ha ha. The hubby and I were sooooooo glad to finally lay down and close our eyes--and we were just as glad when it was time to hit the hay again the next night. :)

So, all that to say that it was quite a long, drawn-out day in getting our new furbaby, but it was worth it. :)

Now to introduce you to....


PEETA

I'll have to explain more about WHY we chose that name in a bit...ha ha.

This was taken a few minutes after we picked him up at the airport. :)
Peeta is a Cardigan Welsh Corgi...if you've ever seen a Corgi before it was likely a Pembroke Welsh Corgi--the tail-less Corgi (Pems are what the Queen's Corgis are)--as Cardis are much less common here in the U.S. Corgis are a herding breed (I've come to the realization that I love herding breeds more than any other--probably due to the fact that I grew up with a Border Collie mix and an Australian Shepherd mix....)

He's ridiculously cute. (Sorry for the low quality photo...a lot of the photos I'll be posting today are from my cell phone--it's hard to wrangle my real camera with lens and lens hood along with the Munchkin and Peeta, lol)
This was taken the morning after we got him (or maybe I should say a few hours after we got home from picking him up in Atlanta, ha ha). Not to sound like I'm gushing or anything, but I absolutely adore how thick his short little legs are--and how big his paws are--soooooo cute.
He thinks he's dying of heat stroke if he's outside for even just a couple of minutes and it's very common for him to flop down like this on any cool surface he can find.
This picture makes me smile. Munchkin LOVES Peeta.
The treat ball Munchkin is holding is AWESOME. More about that later....
Snuggling.
Originally Munchkin had Peeta 'tucked in' under the blanket--he said Peeta would get cold because the fan was on. Then Munckin wanted me to read Peeta a Winnie-the-Pooh story.... :)
We were hanging out in the garage while the Munchkin and my hubby washed the cars. Peeta is wet in this picture because the Munchkin has just sprayed us lightly with the hose, ha ha.
He totally thought he was going to die from the heat. The fan was his best friend.
You can see his brindle coloration pretty well in this picture....
Buddies
(please excuse the mess...we are still in the process of remodeling and sometimes we run out of space to 'shift' things to).
I guess he thinks his 'toy box' is a super snug bed. ;)
He loves to sleep like this.
And this...I call this the road kill crash position, ha ha.
And this too apparently. LOL!

Soooooo, that's our new baby. :) I'll tell you more about why we chose his name later....

Photobucket