Love Some Lulu: Happy Birthday My Precious Pup!

Today is Lulu’s birthday! She’s one year old. It seems like only yesterday Erik and I were sitting on the couch talking about how cool it would be to have dog hanging out with us.

Here’s how Lulu came to be…

I had been talking about getting a dog for a long time, but I wanted to wait until all the conditions were right. The first step was living close enough to my workplace so I could go home and check on a dog at lunch. Then there was figuring out what kind of dog we wanted. Erik is kind of a clean freak, so he wanted one that didn’t shed. We both agreed that a mid-sized dog would be good, maybe around 40-45 lbs. When I was on a walk one day, I ran into a man walking the cutest, fluffiest puppy. I stopped him and asked him what it was, and he told me it was a goldendoodle. After doing some research on the breed, I was sold. Erik and I were going to get a medium-sized, apricot-colored goldendoodle.

We made a few trips to look at doodles, but I couldn’t really find a breeder I felt comfortable with. I finally found someone about 30 minutes away that I really liked. Erik and I went to her house to look at her doodles. She didn’t have any puppies at the time, but she was planning a litter for about 6 months down the road. Erik and I thought we could be patient, but we were wrong. As soon as we met her adult doodles, we wanted a puppy right away! The breeder told us her cousin had a litter of two-week old puppies that we could look at, but they were dark mini goldendoodles. I didn’t want a dark doodle, but Erik really liked the idea of having something different (plus they cost less than the golden colored ones). He convinced me to drive down the street and at least look at them. Typically, they don’t let you see or hold the puppies until they are older, but the lady brought out a basket with all 9 puppies for us to see and she said I could pick one up. I looked in and saw the sweetest little face I’d ever seen. Without hesitation, I said that’s the one I want to hold! I snuggled her close for about 30 seconds, then had to give her back.

Five minutes later I was writing a check for our puppy deposit. The breeder told us we would get first pick of the litter, and I could choose my puppy when they were about 4 weeks old. We went home and I instantly started ordering monogrammed puppy blankets, food bowls, beds, toys, etc. Erik and I were so excited! The breeder updated the puppy pictures about once a week, so I constantly stalked her web site. As soon as the first pictures were up, I recognized the little puppy I had held. I told Erik I felt like she was the one, but I still wanted to wait and see how they changed as they got older. It felt like months, but when two more weeks had gone by, we got to go back and play with all the puppies and make our final decision. I had done a lot of research about how to pick the right puppy from the litter. There were several “tests” to perform to find out more about their personalities.

When we got there, I had it narrowed down to three puppies based on their looks, and of course the original pup I held was one of them. The other two puppies passed all the personality tests just fine. When I started testing my initial puppy choice, she was awful. I tried to put her on her back and she bit me. I called her to come to me and she ran the opposite way. I started to panic because I wanted to pick her, but she was doing everything wrong! Erik, the voice of reason, informed me that my testing was just BS and I should pick the dog I want. When I put that bad little puppy back in her cage, she stuck her mouth through the bars and licked me on the nose. I knew right then and there 100% sure that puppy was my Lulu (I just got tears in my eyes when I wrote that last sentence)!

We were so happy when we left that day! It was going to be hard to wait another 4 weeks to bring her home, but that’s what we had to do. I took off work on Friday, June 24 to go pick her up. My mom came with me since Erik had to work. When I got her in the car, she put her sweet little head on my chest and looked up at me the whole ride home. I loved her so much already!

It was tough the first few months– getting up in the middle of the night for potty breaks, having to leave her at home by herself, trying to do everything right…but it was all worth it! Get ready for puppy picture overload!