Zippy!

Here a picture of my husband Brian, myself, and our golden retriever, Zip, last Thanksgiving.  When we got him, our current golden was 13 years old, safely in his retirement years.  I apologized to him for months for getting Zip, though I believe he breathed some life into our aging dog.  We weren’t looking for another dog at the time, but a friend posted his picture in FB, and how could I turn down that smiling face?!  He was A LOT of work, but now, at 5 years, has turned out to be a great companion.  Here’s his story.  I hope you are sitting down…

Zip came to my friend through a breeder friend she knew.  From that breeder friend, he came from another breeder, who purchased him from a breeder in Houston.  And this was all within 4 months!  We adopted him at 5 months.  He was very wild, and this was my first puppy experience as an adult.  Honestly I didn’t know what to expect.  He was very hard to train.  My husband and I helped teach training classes for a couple years with a breeder friend we had, so I thought I could do it.  Oh my.  I couldn’t tell if this was just normal puppy behavior, or his personality.  But given his constantly changing “home” for the first 4 months of his life, he didn’t have the stability he needed.  And as much as I wanted to give him up for adoption, I told myself I just couldn’t do it to him.  He had been through enough.  And I do believe in fate.  I thought this dog came to me.  To us.  This is hard, but there’s a reason.  Onto our SAS diagnosis…