Lots of dogs is a good thing if you ask anyone at our house. August is National Dog Month where we can be thankful for our home and all the dogs around us. Mom say her life has gone to the dogs, which actually happened years ago, but it makes her happy, so why not. The quote below is ideal for today.
“Life is too short to have just one dog.”
Trine was Mom’s first dog and she came from the Humane Society. Mom was always a cat person but wanted a dog. She had a lot to learn and Trine was an ideal first dog. She was also an only dog most of her life. At about five years old she moved to Germany with Mom where she spend the rest of her life and absolutely loved it.
In 2002 Mom got her first puppy and purebred, Katie who was a Kuvasz. She was a wild child according to Mom but she got along well with Trine. She was well known for taking off and not coming when called.
Katie and Trine were a big pair and they did most things together despite their age different. Sadly, Trine passed in 2003 about about fourteen months after Katie joined the family. Back to one dog it was.
Mom missed having two dogs. It took a few years but in 2007, she discovered a GBGV and ended up getting Emma from England in 2006. Emma loved the North Sea and was a wet hound almost every day.
Katie adored her little GBGV sister. Less than a year after Emma came to live with Mom, they moved back to the US. The two of them spent a lot of time walking around the lakes and Emma was always getting in the water. She was a true water hound.
Life as a two dog household continued until the fall of 2013 when I, Bailie, joined the family as the third dog. Mom was not sure how it would go with three but we did just fine. Emma never really forgave me for crashing her seventh birthday party but she had to live with it.
Mom took all three of us on walks together all the time which seems crazy now. We are too strong but Emma and Katie were well behaved. At this point, only one dog would no longer be right, two maybe, but three was much more fun.
Katie had been having issues for a few years but she finally succumbed to them in 2016. Shortly after that we brought Madison home. She was the small but mighty family member who loved people over everything else. Like Emma, she was a big water dog and took a dip whenever the opportunity knocked. She was at Montrose Dog Beach in Chicago when this photo was taken.
We managed to get a photo of the first time all three dogs were GBGVs.
Emma passed away suddenly from an internal infection in 2018. An unplanned litter was born five months later and Mom picked up Olivia. It truly was a miracle sent by Emma. After seven months of two hounds, we were back to three.
The three of us checked each other out really well those first few days Olivia was at our house.
Three years later Mom wanted another GBGV and she wanted a boy for the first time ever. Enter Mr. Nelson. He fit right into our family of girls. We all love him and he is good to all of us.
For the first time, Mom had four of us GBGV’s and she was loving it. We all adjusted and while Bailie didn’t have any interest in sports or travel our trio enjoyed trialing and traveling around the country. At the time we hoped this foursome would be together for years.
When Madison suddenly left us two months after the photo of us four, we dropped back to three. Mom says she still feels like she is missing a limb or something. Four was a nice number. So here we are the three of us. Mom clearly doesn’t find one dog enough, three isn’t bad. Maybe one day we will have a fourth sibling again but right now we are three and we are thankful for a good home.
My GBGV Life is joining Brian’s Home Blog in the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop!