awww whoozha cute doggie?

Yes, YOUzha cute doggie!


Checking out her new territory.


Inspecting the old coffeemaker.


I guess the beagle genes are dominant.

For those confused, we did indeed adopt a new dog. You might recall that Belle, we discovered, had lymphoma and passed away this past September. Mom, the de facto primary dog caretaker, voted we not get another dog. Although it's great to have one around, it can be a pain to feed/walk/cleanupafter them, and any overnight vacations means putting the dog in a kennel. But as my mom put it, "dad kept whining about how we didn't have a dog anymore" and how they'd always had at least one dog since they've been married. So she looked into getting another small beagle as a Valentine's gift.

We found Brigitte on PetFinder and noticed a resemblance to Belle (Brigitte is actually a beagle/fox terrier mix, and as you can see, looks like someone put a miniature beagle's head on Eddie-from-Frasier's body). It turns out that the woman who found her is associated with Erie Shores Humane Society, and it so happens that one of my co-workers is too. She gave us some more specific information on Brigitte's personality and background, and mom and I went to meet her in person (in dog?). She was extremely friendly (and lick-y) and never barked. She doesn't share her humans, however, and when mom was petting her and another dog came up to be petted, Brigitte nipped at the other dog. But since we don't have any other pets, this shouldn't be a problem. (And when she wasn't vying for a human's attention, she was fine with the other dogs.)

Mom and I thought she'd be a great match and arranged for a foster family to keep her until Valentine's Day so we could keep it a surprise. She had already been scheduled for a spaying, dental cleaning, and booster shots for the 14th, so she didn't actually come home until yesterday. To further the Kevin-Bacon-esque connections of this dog, the foster mom is a friend of a friend of my aunt, and she relayed that the foster family simply adores Brigitte and offered to dogsit in lieu of putting her in a kennel when we're away.

We finally got to hear her bark, too. I descended the stairs fairly loudly last night (hardwood steps), and she was awoken from her sleep and barked until she realized it was just me. Besides that, she never makes noise other than an occasional whine and yawn.

We haven't decided on a name yet. Dad veto'd my suggestions of Molly and Penny. At one point he suggested we just keep the name Brigitte (although if he goes with that, I'd at least tell him to spell it Bridget). Mom came up with Lucy or Sally, continuing the Peanuts theme from Belle (Snoopy's sister is named Belle). I jokingly suggested we just call her Belle II, since we named Max II after Max I based on their similar appearance. Unfortunately, all of the non-human names we came up with (Snickers, Copper, Pepper) seem like better names for a boy dog. We tried to think of fictional characters, musical terms, composers, Ancient-Rome-related names (Livia? Hera?), but couldn't think of anything good. I could see her as a Sally though.

Oh, and some odd person rescued a beagle and named it Dipstick. I suggested we name our dog Wiperblade, on account of her constant tail-wagging.