It was an early this Saturday morning when we set out on the hour and a half drive north to our breeder's home. This trip was to be more of an interview than a sure thing.
There was a second litter at the house, 2 weeks younger. This group was to show up an hour before us for their 5 week visit and breeder introduction. It was this litter that originally led me to contact the breeder. After educating myself on what constitutes a responsibly bred litter, I actually had withdrawn our interest from that litter. It's a long story, but suffice it to say that it was not the litter for us, and through no fault of the breeder we selected as it wasn't even her litter!
After we stepped away from that litter, I had restarted our search in earnest, looking high and low. I had put in applications with 3 breeders that I would have to be more than lucky to get a puppy from just from the sheer quality of their dogs, and my late application. Overall I was feeling a little low. It seemed that I had worked so very hard to find a dog for us, and we kept hitting dead ends.
It was then, out of the blue, that I got an email from our breeder.
She had an unexpected availability in a litter of her own--a litter that was responsibly and well bred. Later she would share with me that she had a family for Maxwell, but she was growing less and less comfortable with them, and finally refunded their money altogether.
So after a harrowing 90 minutes drive across downtown Dallas through the Saturday morning traffic, we pulled up to the breeder's home. The other group was just finishing up and on their way out.
After washing our hands, the breeder introduced us to the litter. All the puppies were amazingly cute of course. We had left it in the hands of the breeder to pick which puppy would be best suited for us. I felt very comfortable doing this since she had spent the time by email and phone getting to know us and what we wanted to see in a puppy. The small amount of time we were going to spend at her home wasn't sufficient to get a good sense of each puppy's personality, as they all alternate sleeping and playing and being nuts. It would be easy to see the most rambunctious puppy of the lot taking a nap and think them the most mellow of the bunch.
Regardless, when the breeder pointed out Maxwell, my heart jumped a little. It began to sink in that he was our pup, that he was meant to be with us. And as she placed him in my arms, the frustration and struggle of the search; the pain of losing our first Golden, Bo; and the beautiful possibilities of a life together yet to come all rushed in on me. I caught myself tearing up as he licked my cheek when I stuck my nose in his fur to breathe in his smell. It was very nearly the same feeling as the first time I held each of my children after their births.
