I'm happy to announce that after over five years, there is another female in our household!
Meet our adopted "dog"ter, Violet!
We got Violet on January 31st, so it's been about 2-1/2 months now that we've had her.
We weren't looking to get another dog so soon after Yogi died. I'm not the type to hurry and "replace" a loved one with a new loved one. (Not that the original loved one can ever be replaced, but you know what I mean.)
Violet needed a home. She belonged to a friend of a friend of a friend, an older single woman who was dying of cancer and didn't have very long left to live. She really loved Violet and wanted to find a good home for her before she passed away. So, to make a somewhat long story short, Violet ended up with us. I couldn't turn my back on this situation. We had space in our home and in our hearts for another dog. Boo Boo was very lonely. Violet was soon going to lose her owner to cancer, and we had recently lost our sweet Yogi to cancer. It just felt right.
Violet is a very pretty black lab who just turned four years old. She is sweet, friendly, smart, and playful. She's a little neurotic and scares easily sometimes. She was terrified of Peter at first and can still be nervous around him, which makes us wonder about what happened to her during the first 9-10 months of her life before her previous owner got her. Labradors are calm and good-natured, and they don't usually get weird about things unless something scary or traumatic happened to them in the past, unfortunately. Never again, my little lady!
Violet wasn't used to kids since she had lived with an older single woman.
She's gotten used to the boys' energy and silly antics pretty quickly.
She adjusted surprisingly well and quickly to being in a new house with a new family with another dog and new cats. There were a couple of weeks that were very challenging when we did the Invisible Pet Fence training and it scared the living daylights out of her and she didn't want to go outside, so she started going to the bathroom in the house, which made me really mad. I have patience for a lot of things when it comes to animals, but not that. But with more training, treats, and hard-won patience on my part, she's fine going outside now (although she'll still barely go in the front yard, but we'll get there). She also finally successfully kennel-trained in the last few weeks; the dogs are out and about in the house and the yard when we're home, which is the majority of the time, but when we're not home they go in their nice big kennels. Violet did not cooperate with this for the first six weeks or so, but now she does, and it makes a big difference.
Violet and Boo Boo get along pretty well. They got into one vicious fight after we'd had her for about two weeks, but it seems to have been an isolated incident in which they were establishing dominance or their play-wrestling got out of hand, or a combination of both. Boo Boo is not as close or as playful with her as he was with Yogi (theirs was such a special relationship), but he enjoys her companionship and he's not as lonely and "sad" as he was before. Violet can be very playful and energetic, so she likes having another dog to play with. It's very entertaining to watch them chase each other around the yard. Boo Boo is stronger but Violet is faster. It's hilarious!
Violet is on the smaller side. Her fur is silky-soft. She follows me everywhere and howls in sorrow and protest when I leave, which I think is pretty funny. I love that her name is Violet. She reminds me a lot of my #1 beloved dog of all time, Christy, who I had from the ages of 14-29.
We're happy that Violet has joined our family!
