If this time last week you’d told me that I would be cuddling an eight week old German shepherd on the floor of my living room right now, I would have gotten mad at you for toying with my emotions in such a cruel way. But here we are, perfect little German shepherd puppy following us around the house and nuzzling into our laps.

Saturday morning we woke up with zero intention of finding a fur baby. We took our son to the park, just like every other Saturday, and while watching him happily interact with a dog there, my husband turned to me and said “I really think we should get Liam a dog for Christmas”. You see, we’ve been talking about this whole dog thing for a good while now, but the timing just never seemed quite right. So as he said this, I honestly thought nothing serious of it since we’d had similar conversations about a bajillion other times. Moments later, I discovered him casually searching for dogs on his phone, and of course I had to join in on the fun because it would be a total shame to let my husband stare at cute photos of puppies without me. We eventually stumbled upon a German shepherd puppy listing that grabbed our attention immediately. Within minutes, my husband was on the phone with the owner and we were on our way across town to go check out the puppy.

The entire way there, I tried to prepare myself for the worst (such as the owner not feeling that we were a good fit). But the second we jumped out of the car and walked up to the beautiful farm property that she’d been born on, i just had a feeling we would be leaving there that day with our puppy.

As we quickly learned, our pup was the last one left of the pack besides the runt, who the owners were keeping for their own family. We got to meet the mommy and daddy shepherds, were given a rundown on her early weeks of life, got to watch her play with her brother, and were told that a deposit had already been put down on her but was retracted the day prior. Some may say that we happened upon good timing, I would like to say it was puppy fate.

We named our little pup Athena right away, because 1. Having a German shepherd named after the goddess of war and wisdom is awesome and 2. Just look at her… She is a freakin goddess.

She is quickly settling into our home. She frolics around the floor playing with our son as if he is just another litter mate. She cuddles into our laps the second we sit down. She yelps the most adorable little puppy yelp if you leave the room without her even for a quick second. She shows up at the side of our bed with the best most cutest puppy face ever after waking us up to play at three in the morning (which won’t last for long since her crate is arriving Tuesday, thank goodness). She is teaching our son what it means to have to share our attention and is giving us a glimpse at how adorable and big brotherly he will be with a future sibling added to the mix. She is perfect and she is everything that we thought we would have to wait several more years to have. Welcome to the family, Athena.

Cheers,

The Whine Connoisseur