Our Labrador Puppy... The Saga!

From as far back as I can remember I have always wanted a Chocolate Lab. As a child my family had three Black Labs and a Golden Retriever. They were very exceptional dogs that were the most loving and loyal pets a family could ask for. All of that to say, I have always wanted a Chocolate, so I told myself that one day when I got married and settled that my first dog would be a Chocolate named Barkley!

When my husband Kaleb and I got engaged last December, we immediately started planning for our first puppy. After a lot of searching, we found a breeder that we really liked that was expecting a litter in the spring. We liked both the sire and bitch, so we put down a deposit for the first pick male. The difficulty was that the breeder was in Minnesota and we live in Oklahoma. So, in making the decision whether to have him shipped or drive to pick him up, we decided to go to Minnesota for our honeymoon. I was not super thrilled about driving 21 hours on our honeymoon, to go to MINNESOTA, but the promise of a puppy was enough to overlook it. A few months later, we found out that there would be no litter because the pups were born premature and did not make it. Disappointed, we made other arrangements, and went on a beautiful honeymoon in Charleston, SC instead.

We kept checking back with the Minnesota breeder on future litters to no avail. So, we started over in our search in early summer. We found an Oklahoma breeder with a litter that was born on July 14th. The parents were blocky English type Chocolate Labs, just like we have been looking for. So, we again we put down our deposit, and now we wait!