New Boy in Town

Please meet "Tonks." He's an almost-three-year old Bernese Mountain Dog. We are adopting him.

As you can see...he is already making himself a part of the family, hanging out with AK Santini. (That leather sectional is so beat up...it's perfect for snuggling with your new best friend.)

Here's how we came to bring Tonks into our home.

If you are a regular visitor of my blog you know our male Bernese Mountain Dog, Forrest, went missing on July 27th.  He was just shy of turning two and had been through a lot of medical issues in his short life so it made his disappearance extra stressful. With the help of a neighbor, we plastered our community with "Missing" flyers. My husband and I spent hours every day for a month driving the area where we lost him. But it was like Forrest vanished into thin air. 

Shortly after Forrest went missing I contacted our local Bernese Mountain Dog Club and told them I would be interested in taking a rescued dog. They rescue about four dogs a year from around the state of Alaska. Usually they are fairly young and given up because families get them as adorable puppies and just don't anticipate the size that they will grow to or the attention demands they require.

Saturday night I was home alone with our female Bernese, Jenny. We had just finished some cuddling time and I had turned to doing some cross stitch. I looked at Jenny and thought how lonely she looked. The phone rang,  caller ID showed it was Tracy from the Bernese club who is a breeder that we were talking to about getting a puppy. We had just met her a couple of weeks ago. She handles rescues for the club. My first thought was maybe someone had found Forrest. 

Tracy was calling to tell me about Tonks. His owner saw the flyer about Forrest in her local video rental store and thought we might be the family who could take her sweet boy. Tonks' family had simply grown very busy in the last year and was feeling badly about the amount of time he had to spend alone. They made a very heartfelt choice to find a better situation for him.

We met at a local school playground. Tonks reminded us immediately of our first Bernese, Greta. He is a "dark" Bernese with smaller white fields than our girl, Jenny who is considered a "light"  Bernese. After meeting we all agreed it was something we wanted to do. They went home to gather a few things for Tonks and brought him to our home Sunday afternoon. Tonks' first family got a tour of our digs and then they said a tearful goodbye.

The evening meal went well, Jenny on the left, Tonks on the right. Tonks is beautifully trained. I took him for a walk after dinner and he didn't pull on his leash at all. He and Jenny did a little playing together...she also put him in his place a few times. He was a little sad at bedtime but his is crate trained so he finally settled down for a very quiet night.

It was just wonderful to wake up this morning to his smiling face.