40 by 40 - Get a dog

I've had a dog for most of my life. When AJ and I got married, we got a dog within the first year. I love having a dog around and have missed it ever since we had to put Snax down about 2 years ago. It didn't make sense to get one right away when we knew we'd have another baby, so we waited. Then we had Dallas and we're getting to the point where he's not so needy and I started getting puppy fever. I thought it would be great to get one while on mat leave so I'd been home more often and have time for training. AJ wasn't so sure so I just looked up puppies online.

One day, I was looking up breeders to see if there were any new litters of goldendoodles at a reasonable price and I found one in Peterborough. I sent it to AJ more as a joke, but surprisingly, he said we should do it. I called the breeder and they still had a female left and Kyler had a PA day the next day so we went on a road trip. We didn't tell Kyler what we were doing and he was very patient for the whole 2.5 hour drive.

When we got there, we went inside and told Kai what was up. He was pretty excited. We took a look at 2 different dogs and fell for the playful white one.

We made a deal and brought our new puppy home.

We named her Kona which means Lady in Hawaiian and is also an apparently delicious coffee. Kyler is already her favourite and has the playful scratches to prove it. The first bit is always a little more trying - she cries when we leave the penned in area of the house or put her in the mudroom at night and there are lots of accidents to clean up, but she's already a pretty great dog and I love having her sleeping on my feet right now as I type.