Open House and New Family

Well, kids, it's here! The day of my Open House for ShellHawk's Creations. With everything that's been going on, I'm stunned that it's here already! I haven't even had the time to take pictures of everything, but I'm hoping to snap a few before people start arriving.

 It's been rough around the house without Josey. Not only do we miss her, but the dogs miss her, too. Sam has decided that since she's not around to play with him anymore, that Gromit should fill in. Gromit can't, because his knees are bad and he's just too old.

For those of you who know German Shepherds, you know that they don't really care what you've decided, they are, by God, going to get their way.

So it is with Sam.

He's developed a new game. Stand on top of Gromit with a ball in his mouth. Drop ball on Gromit's head. Watch ball roll off. Chase ball. Grab ball. Repeat from start.

After about ten minutes of this, Gromit looked around at us as if to say, "Seriously? Really, you have to help me."

Mr. ShellHawk and I had a heart to heart about it. Gromit is older than Josey, around twelve or thirteen years old. We don't expect him to last more than another year, and we came to the conclusion that we don't want his last year to be miserable because of Shepherd torture. Whether we were ready or not, we needed a new dog. And believe me, we are under no illusions that we're emotionally ready for a new pup. We are not.

Even so, the search started. I emailed my breeder, but didn't hear back from her. I checked local German Shepherd Rescues, but didn't see a suitable dog. We ended up where we began, ten years ago, with Josey: Westside German Shepherd Rescue.

Mr. ShellHawk drove down to Moorpark, which is in Southern California, to pick up the new girl, in spite of the fact that he's exhausted from a lot of travel. And here she is:

Meet Coda.

co·da

 noun \ˈkō-də\

: an ending part of a piece of music or a work of literature or drama that is separate from the earlier parts

: something that ends and completes something else

God help us. We're back to puppy-proofing for a German Shredder (a nickname for German Shepherds, along with "German Shedder"). *sigh*