Our Faithful Golden

Many of you know the story of our dog Scarlett... but many of you may not. And, since this blog is someday going to turn into a book for Alli & Aiden to see the adventures we went through while they were growing up, I figured it may be a good thing to write about.

One late summer/early fall day, as newlyweds and new home owners, we went to Whole Foods in Mount Pleasant because I'd heard that the golden retriever rescue would be there with potential Goldens to rescue. We got there and they were already gone. Bummer. So, since we were over there, we decided to go get smoothies. Lo and behold, right next to the smoothie place was a pet boutique that just so happened to have a different golden retriever rescue out front displaying some of their puppies up for rescuing. We met them all, and Eric fell in love with the one with the goofiest ears, Georgetta. We had to set up a home visit from the rescue people, go visit her again at another rescue event, and then finally, we were "approved" to get her! (Doesn't it seem crazy you have to go through all that to get a dog... have someone come check out your house to make sure it's acceptable, yet you don't have to do any of that for having children?!)

In September of 2008, Georgetta had her name officially changed to Scarlett, and she was officially a member of our family. She was a great puppy, already pretty house trained, and loved her crate. She slept in her crate for years... even when we didn't lock her in, we'd hear her climbing into the crate at night and we'd just laugh. It was just her spot. Throughout the last three years, she keeps getting closer to us at night. She was downstairs in the crate, then slept on the top staircase, then the corner outside of our bedroom, and now she sleeps in the corner of our bedroom. She has really become quite the family dog. She always wants to be close by and be wherever we are. We had our faithful golden right in the room during our sleepless, up-all-night-nights with both babies, despite her obvious issues with not being the only "child" anymore.

Scarlett not too thrilled with Alli's first days home...

Alli has really started to love her dog more and more these days. She has always enjoyed being around her "woof woof", but now-a-days, even more so. She says "hi woof woof", "bye woof woof", "night woof woof" "gog" (that's how she says dog)... and proceeds to point out all her facial features: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc. Last weekend we took Scarlett to Petsmart to get her nails trimmed, and Alli literally cried when she saw them taking her "goggy" away. It was so sad, yet so cute to see how attached Alli has become to Scarlett. Fortunately all it took was us taking Alli over to the fish tanks for her to forget all about it.

Last weekend, some friends were in town for the first time in over a year. They commented on how fat Scarlett had gotten since they last saw her. We said, "Yeah, having a toddler who throws food on the ground will do that." So, Dad-E dusted off Scarlett's leash and took her for a jog in the sweltering summer heat to try and shed some doggy lbs. Well, given that it's been a while since Scarlett has pounded the pavement with her good and smart master, she actually ended up scraping the top layer off both her front paw pads. She proceeded to limp around the house for the next three days. Dad-E being the big softie that he is, picked up his hefty dog and carried her upstairs to our room each night so she could sleep by us. It made me sad to realize that he'll probably be doing that in a few years for a different reason. Luckily for us, her injuries were temporary and she was back to her normal, goofy-self by the middle of the week.

Scarlett has really been a trooper through it all. Just by looking at her face it looks like she's aged 8 years since we brought Alli home (and then added Aiden to the mix). I'm sure Dad-E and I probably look like we've aged that much right along with her. I can't wait to watch the A-Team grow up with Scarlett by their side, since I'll never forget my first dog growing up.

Hard to believe this was July 2010, how different our lives were just two years ago...