Dolphin’s Dock

Nice thing about snowballs, is that when he decides not to bring it back, I don’t have to go get it!

Lately I feel like we’ve been hemorrhaging cash (new house, new fridge, new bed and getting estimate for new windows), so I’m not 100% sure that this is the best time to be adding an expense. That said, we had long said once we got a nice yard, we wanted to get a dog. I have wanted a Sheltie since I was in Elementary school. My school held a carnival and the music teacher, who was part of a dog training club, had he organization put on a dog show. I sat the Shetland Sheepdog and was in love from that point forward. In college, when I had told TheBoyfriend™ that the Sheltie was he looked at the breed and decided his preference among the standard color variations was the tri-color (he found this painting as the example of the perfect tri-color coloring).

Our new Puppy

When TheBoyfriend™ brought it up to me, I TRIED to be the grownup and consider the costs of adding a dog to the family, at a time when my gas expenses had just shot up thanks to a long commute, our mortgage is ever so slightly higher per month than rent had been (by about $20), and we have no idea what heating and cooling bills are going to be like here. On the other hand, he’s in the process of getting a raise, and his work gas expenses should go down. That’s not enough to completely alleviate my concerns about us getting another mouth to feed and vet bills to pay, but I at least agreed to go see the puppy, and in all honesty, I knew that was as good as agreeing to buy it.

So now we have a puppy, though we can’t bring it home for another week. Which is good because we need to get a few things for it and decide on a name. I’m extremely picky about pet names. I prefer uncommon but easily recognizable and pronounceable non-human names (though an uncommon human name is sometimes acceptable). Several times the lady we’re purchasing the dog from mentioned that it the coincidence on coloration must mean it was “karma” that we have the dog (I think she meant “fate” because “karma” doesnt’ really make sense to me in that context). I kinda seized on “Karma” as a potential name, but apparently the rest of the world seems to think that Karma is too feminine for a boy dog. We’ve been looking at names and getting suggestions all night, so far our top picks in no particular order are Coda, Zeke, or Mystic. Any suggestions?