Bringing home and photographing our new puppy.

Lily, 8 weeks old.

I have owned several dogs in my adult life.  Sadie I raised from a puppy and she broke my heart when she died of hip cancer 9 years later.  We rescue Bradee 8 years ago as an adult dog and she passed away 5 years later.  Tom brought Lucy home from the pound 17 years ago.  She finally passed away in late April.  I wanted to wait a while before getting another dog.  Losing 3 dogs in 8 years was very sad for me...but I missed having a young dog.  My son and husband really wanted a puppy so we decided it was time, a lot sooner than expected.  They started to look and we stumbled on a litter of black lab/dane mix puppies out in Belfair, WA.  On June 15th, we drove out to the small town near Bremerton.  They had 3 female puppies and they chased Robbie all over the large yard where the puppies were living.  One of the black girls warmed to Robbie right away and became a quick favorite.  She bonded with all of us.  Katie said that we should call her Lily because the only black flower in my garden, and it matches well with my cat's name (which is Lucy, believe it or not!)  Lily stuck and she picked us too for her forever home and family.

Robbie bonding with Lily

petting behind the ears.

Lily was born on April 16th.  She is all black, but she has a little bit of brindle on her forehead.  She has a tiny patch of white on her chest.  She looks like a black lab, but she has long Great Dane legs.  Her mother was 90 pound brindle lab/dane, but her father was unknown.  Based on all the litter mates, it is suspected that the dad was a black lab.  It doesn't look like there are any other breeds, but I will have Dr Davidson (our vet) confirm on Friday.  Pit Bull mixes are very prevalent and I did not want a mix with that breed, mainly for 2 reasons.  First, for the dog's safety, I would never want her to be considered dangerous, just because of her breed and 2nd, I don't want us to have to worry about taking her anywhere, or having to worry about her being considered an "aggressive breed" or dangerous.    So, finding a dog without pit is quite difficult unless you go with a purebred, which we didn't want to do.  We wanted to adopt a rescue dog.   However, it was very important to me that we have a lab because I love that breed.  Even though Danes are very large, they are considered very calm.  This is a nice combination with the more hyper retrievers.  Even though we are going to have a big dog, this combination should be very good for us.  Lily will be a big girl, but it is already seems very calm and very sweet.

Robbie and Lily in the backyard.

Lily quickly attached herself with Robbie and followed him all over the place.  It allowed me to get some great photos of them together.  She seems to react well to my camera and one of the awesome things about the DSLR is the rapid fire pictures, which makes it easy for action shots.

You can expect to see a lot more photos of her over the next few months, mainly how much she is going to grow!