Our Zoo Crew gets even bigger!

Well, it's taken me a while to post this, but I just wanted to share with everyone the news of our newest member of the Williams Zoo Crew! We adopted a dog last week...an Australian Shepherd! We named him "Sydney" because he's Australian and that's a famous city in Australia.

So, how did this happen? Well, we've been debating and talking about getting a puppy or dog for a few years now. We weren't sure when the time would be right, so we thought we'd wait until the mood strikes us and we agree the timing for our family is good. We had seen an Australian Shepherd puppy at a local pet store about 10 months ago. He was adorable and the kids loved him. But, spending $500 was not what we needed to be doing at the time. Scott spent a lot of time researching about that particular breed and felt that he would be interested in this breed if we were to ever get a dog. We wanted a dog that was not small, but not too large either (like a German Shepherd or Labrador Retriever, etc.). I was surfing Craigslist last week and found the picture of Sydney. I showed it to Scott, because the ad said the family was giving him away for free! Scott contacted the owner and had some questions answered and we finally decided to surprise the kids last Friday afternoon by picking up the dog! Sydney was living with a family of five children, so he was used to being around kids and was good with kids...definitely a plus for us! The biggest plus was the fact that he was already housebroken and crate-trained, which means, he had been used to being in a crate if needed should the family need to leave the house. The previous owners said that he was approx. 6 months old and that they needed to find him a family that had a backyard for him to be able to run around in because they had just moved to a brand new home with absolutely no backyard at all for him! Scott went to pick him up on Friday, along with his crate and blanket and other items and he could definitely see that there was no appropriate yard for Sydney, so we felt good about being able to give him a new, loving home environment! I forgot to mention that we had also prayed with the kids during the week that if God wanted our family to be able to adopt him, then He would make it possible for us. Fortunately, it all worked out and we don't have to go through the tough stage of training him to go #1 and #2 outside. That's perhaps a very frustrating stage in raising new puppies. We used to own a small peke-a-poo years ago and I remember the difficulties in training him from the beginning. He also used to chew through all of my shoes! Luckily, Sydney doesn't appear to have these issues so far. We are delighted he has joined our family and I think he is beautiful! He is a tri-colored Aussie. He's mostly black and white, but he also has some areas of tan along his legs, which is what makes him the tri-color. The kids adore him, but our cat, Leo, is still adjusting...LOL!!!