Kramer and Charlie: How zero puppies turned in to one puppy, and one puppy turned into two.

OK, this is a couple of weeks late, but on Sunday, February 5 Tammy got it in her head that she HAD to get a puppy.

Now, she will probably be a little upset with that portrayal, but let me explain.  The truth is that we both had decided to get a new Golden Doodle puppy since ours passed away a few months back. We had a local breeder picked out with a beautiful Golden Retriever who was due to have a new litter the first of February. Had this been the case, the new puppy would have been ready to be picked up around the first of April, or just after we would be getting back from vacation in March.  Perfect timing.  Unfortunately, we got word from the breeder that the pregnancy didn't take.

Back to Sunday the 5th at around 10 AM.  Tammy and I decided to investigate other options (breeders).  During that search, we happened to come across Kingdom Hearts Kennels -  a breeder in Salineville, Ohio.  Never heard of Salineville?  Neither had we and with good reason - it is in the middle Northeast Ohio nowhere.  As we where looking at their site, Tammy noticed they had three 10-week old Golden Doodles who had yet to be adopted.  After looking them over for a little while, Tammy turned to me and said, "Let's go get one!" or words to that effect.  I was a little taken aback since I was under the impression that "we didn't want a puppy until after Spring break".  However, Tammy got the bug, and we decided to make the trek to Salineville.

We loaded up the car with items to help a new puppy travel, Perri climbed in the back, and away we went.  And went, and went, and went.   Up I-71 towards Cleveland.   Some other freeway (I-76?) towards Canton (got to see the Pro Football Hall of Fame go by at 65 MPH), South on I-77 to "Highway" 30 to about 4 more like it to Salineville.  We were so far away from a major highway that the GPS system said, "Sorry, I really have no clue where you are.  Good Luck!"

We left Powell around 1 PM and finally made it to Kingdom Hearts Kennels a by about 4:15 PM.  The kennel was small, and about a dozen dogs where inside the main house, but it was clean and the owners were very nice.  We had the owner, Margee, get out "Green Dot" - the largest of the three pups.  He was very cute, but was not selling because his size was scaring people off.  We fell in love immediately and knew he would be going home with us.  While we where playing with Green Dot, Perri started playing with "Blue Dot" - another one of the three pups and Green Dot's brother.  Of course Perri was loving that.  I didn't realize how much she was loving that until she said, "Can I get puppy for graduation?"

Um, What?!

Here's a little background.  Tammy had promised Perri for years that she would take Perri and a few friends on a nice trip as a high school graduation present. Perri's graduation is this June and Tammy had been busy planning the trip - which turned out to be more expensive, and more of a hassle than we she had anticipated. In addition to that, Tammy had occasionally wished out loud that our previous dog, Winston, had a playmate.

The Perfect Storm.

So, when Perri requested we buy her a puppy for graduation, I  - in moment of temporary insanity - took the quick way out of paying for a trip and said, "It's OK with me if it's OK with mom, but you would have to give up your trip."

Perri couldn't say "Yes" fast enough.  And Tammy, in a moment of "I'm surrounded by cute puppies" weakness agreed to the deal.  So in a minute or so of "What the hell just happened" we found ourselves buying TWO puppies that night instead of one.  So, we saved a lot of money (upfront) and hassle (upfront) by canceling the trip, and with this particular breeder, the two puppies we adopted cost less together than one puppy from the breeder we were initially going to use.

Here is a picture of our new family members  Kramer is on the left and Charlie is on the right in this picture - they are in reverse order in the picture at the top.  The ride home was long and tiring, but the puppies did great - only needing one pit stop with NO accidents in the car.

As for how they've done since then.  Well, that's another story.