Introducing…
Gideon 
It definitely happened sooner than I thought it would, but yup, we got a puppy. Last Friday (the 6th), Bart happened to get onto Facebook, which he doesn’t do very often, and noticed that Russell’s status was something like “I have 6 puppies to find homes for” and long story short, we ended up going over there Friday afternoon to see the puppies and by 6:00 PM, we had this little guy at home. So, not totally PLANNED, but we definitely don’t regret it.
Of course his first day at his new home, he was a little uncertain and shy, but that didn’t last long. By day 2, he was in full puppy mode, so no worries. For the first two nights, we closed him in our bathroom with a blanket and a toy and he actually did pretty well. We had to wake up 3-4 times the first couple nights to take him outside, but we were just happy he was letting us know. He never did pee in there! Impressive
Sunday afternoon, we went to Petsmart and bought him a crate. It’s surprising how quickly he accepted it, but now he goes in with little or no pursuasion (depends on how hyper he is) and sleeps in there all night and only whines when he needs to go outside.
He has a really funny personality and of course as a puppy, he’s wild and crazy and runs all over the place. Our biggest challenge is going to be teaching him to not bite/nip/chew on everything that stands in his way! We’ve been pretty good on keeping him on a schedule and taking him outside every half hour or so (kinda tiring, but it’ll be worth it!) so I’m confident he’ll be fully housebroken within a few months. The BITING though gets pretty frustrating, but we just have to be patient.
We took him to Santaquin to meet the kids and to meet Jaxon. Of course everyone loved him (including Jaxon). We want to focus on getting him used to other people and other dogs/animals so we don’t have issues with that later.
On Saturday, Lisa watched Gideon for a while and Bart and I went up AF Canyon to visit Sam. I hadn’t been to his grave at all and Bart hasn’t been up there since he buried him, so it was really nice to go up there. I still find myself surprised at how much I miss him. Every once in a while something will remind me of him, or I’ll just feel lonely and I miss him coming up and putting his chin on my lap, or nudging his nose under my arms when he wanted me to pet him. I miss a lot of things about Sam, even the things that used to annoy me. Funny how that works, isn’t it? It’s been a little over 2 months since we lost Sam and it’s still hard. It was nice to visit him and we promised we’d bring Gideon up in a couple months.
Bart let Gideon have Sam’s bowl. I was actually pretty surprised and impressed that he would, because Sam had that bowl his entire life and I think Bart’s had a hard time letting go of some things. It made me cry when I took this picture, because Sam’s head barely fit in this bowl. LOL Gideon can’t quite use Sam’s ice cream bucket for water yet though. LOL
It still kinda makes me tear up, thinking of Sam and how small Gideon is compared to him… and to think that Sam was once this size. He woulda liked Gideon He always liked dogs that were smaller than him! lol
I had to document Gideon’s first few moments home. This was shortly after we got him home and introduced him to his toys, which were handed down from Sam, for now.
On another note… Last Thursday was Bart’s 25th birthday and Xoe’s 11th. It was a really good day and honestly I think one of, if not THE best birthday of his I’ve ever witnessed. Zack, Xoe and Lisa came over and Bart got spoiled Zack got him a NICE BBQ grill and Lisa got him a Kitchenaid mixer. lol Xoe got a laptop from Zack, Super Mario Wii from Bart and me. So, we had a BBQ (Steak, baked potatoes and corn on the cob – ALL GRILLED!) and played Mario for a bit, then had Arizona cool cake for Bart and an ice cream cake for Xoe (they even blew out candles!) and it was just an all around awesome night. I was VERY happy that he finally had a really happy birthday.