puppy

jesse and i finally bought a puppy!
i am soooo excited.

honestly, i am just surprised that jesse finally caved - i never thought i would break him! we have been looking at dogs for a while now and ever since we moved in to our new place it has been a frequent topic of conversation (a topic that has probably annoyed jesse more than i am willing to admit). we have been researching breeds and trying to find a type of dog that would fit our life style but it was harder than we had expected. neither of us were wanting to get a small dog (since we both don't believe anything less than 40 lbs is a dog, instead, an oversized rat with hair) but most of the breeds we liked were incredibly active, working dogs.  for the most part, we liked the shepherds and collies but we knew that it would be irresponsible of us to adopt a working dog at this point in our lives considering we honestly just don't have the time to give a  dog like that all the exercise it needs to be physically and mentally healthy. so, since neither of us wanted a small, low maintenance pup and both of us felt guilty keeping a naturally active dog cooped up during the day while we are at work, we finally decided on the perfect breed for us: the great dane!

great danes are large and lazy. i know, they are obnoxiously sized but honestly, they have such amazing temperaments. i am sure you are all thinking that we have no idea what we are getting ourselves into with this giant breed but believe me, we do. my dad's parents have always had great danes. i grew up with them and they truly are gentle giants. basically, a great dane is an over sized lap dog. all they want to do is love you and cuddle you and laze around. they become incredibly attached to their owners, another thing we loved about the breed. also, they are really low maintenance (minus the massive poop); it is actually recommended that they get no more than 15-30 minutes worth of exercise a day! perfect for a young working couple! The only down size to our breed of choice was the fact that they are almost as obnoxiously expensive as they are large...

so, since jesse really wanted to adopt a brand new puppy and we were aiming to get a pup in may, that meant we had to constantly be checking kijiji for expecting dogs and newly arriving litters of pups that would be available to be brought home early may. well, since i am addicted to kijiji i found an amazing litter of puppies for an even more amazing price - nearly half the price of most dane pups. i will be the first to admit that almost everything about the breed is snobby; the breeders, the standards and the price. luckily, i found one of the most down to earth breeders out there who was not trying to rip of potential puppy parents, simply trying to find a good home for her pups. the reason she was charging so much less for the litter was because none of the pups had the proper colouring to be show dogs. although great danes come in 7 or 8 different colours, only 5 are considered showable: fawn, brindle, harlequin, black and blue. the puppies that our breeder had were all either merle, boston merle, mantle or white (all of which result in mixing harlequin and blue danes). all of the puppies are healthy (they come with a health guarantee) they just weren't of showable colouring. so, instead of charging potential buyers the price of a showable dane (anywhere from 1500- 2500 dollars depending on the blood line and colouring) she charged enough to make a profit after she paid for their shots and up bringing until they were old enough to be separated from their mother.

merle great dane pup

too adorable

this is what ours will look like when she is full grown

since lianne, the breeder, is located in edmonton, she sent us pictures of all the available pups and let us choose which one we wanted. although my grandparents had brindle and fawn great danes i had always loved the merle colouring so i was immediately drawn towards the merle puppies. luckily, they had a female merle still available when we decided to send our deposit (her pups went fast, she had 11 originally, 7 when i emailed her in reply to her kijiji posting at 6:30 pm and 4 when we committed at 11 pm that evening).

so here she is: emi. we have decided that we are going to call her "emi"which means blessed with beauty since we think they are such beautiful animals; we wanted something very feminine considering she will probably be a giantess...

emi is the pup closest to the top.

the breeder is keeping us posted with photos as she progresses and i will obviously put them on my blog for all my loyal followers (aka. our parents).