Meet Tully!

The newest member of the Eddins family arrived on Tuesday, August 12th!  In one of the most spontaneous decisions we have ever made we welcomed a little Boxer/Shar Pei mix, named Tully, into the family!  And the story goes like this...

I am a volunteer on the board of the Cedar Valley Humane Society and I had gotten word that we were getting a large group of dogs in at the shelter from Missouri, many of them puppies.  I have a team of ladies that I work with at the office and we are all animal lovers, so I was showing them pictures of the puppies online.  We decided to take a little field trip to the shelter to go see a particular dog for my co-worker, Jean.  

When we were there, I peeked in on a few puppies that looked very similar to Tag, our male dog who is a Black Mouth Cur.  Black Mouth Cur's are unheard of around here and if you remember Tag's story, it ended up taking Mike all the way to Texas to pick him up.  So, I was a bit enamored with the fact that there were puppies that looked so much like him out at the shelter.  However, this was about my co-worker and her falling in love with a puppy, not about us needing another dog (that would be crazy!)!

Well, we left the shelter and headed back to the office and we were all puppy drunk!  I couldn't stop thinking about these little girl puppies that looked so much like Tag.  I sent Mike a picture via text message and he said, "cute."  I then proceeded to tell him that maybe he should go take a look.  To which he replied, "if I go out to the shelter I won't be able to leave without a dog."  My response was, "go look, I left without a dog, just go see the two dogs (named: Dorothy & Tabatha at the time).  There was a bit more back and forth via text message, but ultimately Mike was headed to the store to get stuff for dinner and to pick-up Lila.  

I head home and pull in the driveway and look over and much to my surprise my family was in the back yard - Mike, Lila, Luca, Tag, and a NEW puppy!  At that very moment reality sunk in.  WHAT?!  We can't have another dog, let alone a puppy!  We are INSANE!  I seriously meant for him to just go look and then he would come home empty handed and we would talk each other out of it!  Nope.  She was there.  Hanging out in the backyard with my family, making herself at home!  

I get out of the car absolutely dumbfounded.  I look at Mike with my jaw on the floor and he says, "surprise!"  I look at him and say, "OH NO!  I think we should take her back."  To which Lila replies, "NOOOOOOOOO!  I LOVE HER!!!!!!"  At that moment I thought, "Uh-oh, here we go.  We are now a family with 3 dogs."  (Is there any concern that we are hoarding animals at this point?!)

In all seriousness, after the initial shock wore off, I was happy to have her.  Part of my volunteerism at the shelter is help animals find forever homes and we are happy to provide that to our sweet little Tully.  We are adjusting to having a puppy in the house again as it has been 10 years since we have done the puppy gig, but she is doing really pretty well.  Luca & Tag have really been so great to her, showing her the ropes.  And Tag has enjoyed having a buddy to rough house with and play tug of war.  

Tully Dot Eddins

Tag as a puppy                                             Tully as a puppy

Her sweet face melting into my hand

Checking out her new yard

Taking it all in

Sweet face!

Three's company!

Big Sister & Little Sister

What's he doing?!

Lila and her dogs!

Herding!

Worn out!

Getting bigger!

She has crawled right into our hearts!

It may be a little crazy to have three dogs, but to be honest, we have played so many decisions recently on the "safe side," and we weren't overly satisfied with how some of the outcomes played out...so we decided that sometimes being spontaneous, and throwing caution to the wind, can be liberating and bring quite a bit of happiness along with it!