What do you know, Bo?

Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s been awhile since I’ve update all of you on the happenings over at our place. Please understand, life has been very busy for us this summer.

A couple of months ago, our beloved dog, Ozzy, got very sick and we had to make the difficult decision to put him down. This was a very hard day for our family. Ozzy was our “test” child and he was a TERRIFIC dog. He is buried out on Grandma’s farm under a tree in the field. Rest in Peace Ozzy.

For about a week, things were very quiet after Ozzy’s passing. Then, the first night J wasn’t able to come home after work due to having to work the soundboard at the Omaha Royals Baseball game and I found myself alone with the kids at home, I decided that we needed another set of K9 eyes and ears around. There’s just something very comforting about having a dog around to see and hear things that are out of place. So I began my quest to find the next perfect dog.

We found Bo on an add on Craigslist. He was in a small town in Nebraska about a 2 hour drive from Omaha, but he was just what we were looking for. He is a German Shepherd pup mixed with Rottweiler and Brussels Griffin Terrier. He was about 2 ½ months old when we “adopted” him and has grown like a weed so far. And most importantly, he was free.

So far, Bo has been adapting well to life with us. His biggest problem is he has an unlimited supply of puppy energy. He seems to do very well in his kennel and has not had an accident while in it. (We have had a few accidents in the house, but they are becoming less frequent) He is learning to sit and lay down, although he seems to think that if he does the command for only one second that it counts. We are still working on “stay”. That one seems very hard for him to comprehend, although, I shouldn’t be surprised, he doesn’t really ever stop moving, so that command will probably be the most difficult for him to learn.

J took him out for a little target practice the other day to find out if he was at all gun-shy. Bo passed that test with flying colors. J now wants me to research how to train him to be a hunting dog in the hopes that one day he’ll be able to take him pheasant hunting or something of the sort. (one of the commands he’ll need to learn for that is “stay” so we’ll see.) It may be a bit early to start his training on that, but in the meantime we’ll keep letting him hang around when J does his target practice and see what develops.

Eerily, Bo looks a lot like Ozzy did with similar markings and coloring. He does seem to be much more “leggy” than Oz, but lacks a lot of the bulk Oz had. I’m not expecting him to get quite as big as Oz was (Oz was over 100lbs.) but I estimate he’ll get into the 80lb. range give or take 5lbs. or so. He’s got rather large feet, and doesn’t seem to be able to do anything with anything that resembles grace. We’ll see if he gets less clumsy once he grows into those feet.

So, in closing, welcome to the family, Bo. You’ve got some mighty big paws to fill.