How to Buy a House You've Never Seen

    Joey and I are in the process of buying our home in Atlanta, GA. This will be our third home we've owned, and Joey never saw any of them in person prior to buying. I saw our Tucson house in person, but for both our Topeka, KS home and the Atlanta one an in-person visit just didn't work out. In Topeka it was due to another buyer putting an offer on the home the day we found the listing, so we had to act fast. It helped to know that Kansas was going to be a temporary location for us, so we didn't feel like we needed to be too picky- there's a lot we can live with for a couple years. The Atlanta market was also moving fast, and combined with COVID-19, we just didn't feel comfortable making a trip to see the house. Plus this wasn't our first blind-buying rodeo, so we felt prepared and comfortable with the process.
   I'm willing to bet we aren't the only people in this predicament right now, so I thought I'd lay out our "process" in case it was helpful for someone else. I will say that most of my method would apply to house shopping in person as well, but it came in particularly handy for our two blind-buys. So here we go.

1) Prioritize.   Know what you are looking for. Style of the house? Neighborhood? Commute? Price? Kitchen layout? Everyone has an idea of what they would like in a dream home, but it's important to get those ideas laid out and then RANK them so that you have an idea of what to prioritize when you're shopping. This ranking system will also come in handy later.  In Topeka it was really important that we liked the house aesthetically. We weren't exactly stoked about moving to the Midwest and we were a little concerned about my SADS. We figured that even though we hated Topeka, as long as we liked the actual house we lived in it would be manageable. So finding a house in a style we loved and which had a lot of natural light topped our list. Neighborhood was also important. Perrin was only five so we wanted a neighborhood with side walks for when he rode his bike. We originally also wanted to be close to Gage Park (the main green space in Topeka that has a zoo and playground), but ended up compromising on that because we found a picture-perfect 1920s bungalow with windows galore. For Atlanta, commute was most important. After two years of an hour each way drive, Joey wanted to be close enough to walk to the MARTA rail line so that he could commute to work by train. We also wanted to be close enough to Perrin's school to bike there when we felt up to it. Going from Tucson to Kansas, we realized how much we missed being able to bike and walk most places in lieu of driving everywhere. We also wanted a decent yard so I could set up a chicken coop and garden, two other things we gave up when we moved to Kansas. The style of the house itself ended up fairly low on our priority list, although it worked out in the end when we found an adorable 50s cottage.

2) Map it.     Download Google Earth, and get the Pro edition if you can- they usually offer it for free periodically. You can create pin points of specific places and you can then add in circles of varying radii around those points. For example, I pin pointed Perrin's school, the MARTA station, downtown, and the grocery and created 1 and 3 mile radii. The area where those circles overlapped helped us narrow down what neighborhoods to look at and rate them by ideal (everything within one mile) and doable (everything within 3 miles) location. You can then use those areas to draw in your search area on Zillow or your agent's MLS site. If location is anywhere on your priority list, this is a great way to systematically incorporate it into your search. If you don't want to get that technical with it, at least throw the address into Google maps and get an idea for whats around you. Is it a busy area with tons of retail? Are you really close to a nice green space?

3) Quantify.  If you really want to get nitty-gritty, Excel can be your new best friend. We like to make a spreadsheet of all the properties we're considering and use our list of priorities to assign each property a score and create a ranking system. We've done this two ways- a weighted score and ranking score. To create a weighted score, you'll need to decide what factors are most important (which is why prioritizing your wants and needs first is important) and assign more possible points for that value. For example, if price is the most important thing, you may want the cheapest houses to be worth five points, and the most expensive worth zero. In turn if parking isn't as important, you would maybe use a 0-3 scale from street parking to two-car garage. That way when you tally up all the points in the end, price is influencing the overall score more than parking. Or you can create a ranking system for each factor. Rank each property (1st, 2nd, 3rd, so on...) on how well that meet your criteria for each priority, then add up or average out the overall score. In this case the lowest score would be the ideal home. These systems can help you be more objective, which can help if you're prone to knee-jerk decisions or have a hard time looking at the bigger picture (i.e., one house has really nice appliances but you can buy appliances for any home so don't let yourself get distracted by that fancy gas range!).

4) Reconnaissance.  This is the part that is especially important if you can't view a property in person before buying. You need to do a lot of digging. A simple Google search of "best neighborhoods for families in ____ area" will probably turn out a few good reads from cites like Niche, but also local publications with good insider information. You can pull up crime maps, if that's something that might be a concern. And another go-to that I love is Facebook groups. Most neighborhoods have Facebook groups. Some only allow people who currently own a home there to join, but if this is the case I've had good luck with admins answering my questions. If there isn't a neighborhood group, search for other local groups, especially parenting groups if you have children. These are great places to field general questions. For example, are there kids in the neighborhood? Is the community very close? How does traffic flow in the area? Are there any weird quirks or restrictions you should know about? Lots of barking dogs? One group I was inquiring in let me know that they have a standing casual block party every Friday at a different home each week. Another group filled me in on their don't ask/ don't tell chicken policy. These groups are great because you get to interact with people actually living in the area you are considering and they are going to have all the insider dirt.

5) Delegation.   You're going to have to have someone on the ground.  Generally this is going to be your real estate agent. Virtual home tours put online by the seller are nice, but you're probably going to get a better feel for the place if you are live with someone who is actually there. They can also give you a good feel for the place- if it seems light and airy, or dark and cramped, if there are lots of minor aesthetic flaws that didn't show up in pictures, and if there are any obvious structural issues (you're still going to need that thorough inspection once you have a contract, so it doesn't have to be comprehensive).

   
   The other thing to remember is that I do all of this very early on in the process. I continually update it as properties come and go, but a lot of the heavy lifting is done before we are even ready to buy. The key is to be prepared on the front end in case you do have to make a quick decision. We saw the listing for the home we currently have a contract on the night it was listed. The next morning, I had it entered into our spreadsheet and was in conversation with several neighbors. Generally, distance home buying occurs because you don't have time to arrange a trip out to the location, so you need to be ahead of the game.
    After I've done all this, I usually have an extremely good grasp of each property. I can tell you listing details but I can also navigate from that address to any other important location. I know a few neighbors by name. I can tell you where the nearest park is and how long it takes to get to the local sports venue. I put hours and hours over the course of weeks into this process, which is why Joey and I are comfortable with home buying from a distance. That's not saying that the above steps are a guarantee to being comfortable with the situation. In the end, you have to know yourself well enough to know if you can make the decision from a far or if you need to change up your strategy to accommodate an in-person showing.
 

  So most people who have known me for more than two seconds know that I had horrific (is there any other kind?) post-partum depression when Perrin was born. It went medically untreated for six months due to the worst therapist ever and then it took a bit to find a medication that worked for me. Zoloft did not. Wellbutrin, however, has been a good fit. And I've been on it ever since. Occasionally I toy with the idea of weaning off but life shit keeps coming up so I keep kicking that can down the road. However, there is one aspect of PPD that never went away. Maybe it's not even part of the PPD? Maybe it's just my own personal blend of depression and anxiety? IDK. But intrusive thoughts have always been a part of my day to day ever since I had Perrin. I've also noticed that while Joey recognizes that *something* is wrong, it's kind of hard for him to wrap his head around. So I'm going to try and explain what my experience with them is like because I'm sure it's kind of confusing for regular folx who don't deal with any sort of mental health issues.
     First of all, I'm gong to back up and explain my relationship to my brain in general. I don't really remember a time I haven't dealt with depression and anxiety, so I'm not sure what a normal relationship with your brain looks like, but I'm guessing most people without mental health issues don't have to really think about their relationship to their brain much at all. When I talk about my mental health, I tend to see myself in two parts- me, with my logical, functioning thought processes, and my brain, which I blame for the illogical weird shit that goes on in my head. So I spend a lot of time and mental energy "cleaning up" after my brain- mitigating weird thought patterns and trying to manage physical manifestations that are triggered by them. And it's exhausting, because it's damn near constant. So even without intrusive thoughts already in the mix, I feel like I already devote a lot of time and energy to not feeling (and acting) like a crazy person. The second piece of this is that my brain (as I conceptualize it in regards to my mental health) acts independently of my more rational self. I can't control what my brain does; I can just try and buffer it as much as possible.
   Not everyone is familiar with intrusive thoughts and I'm sure you can Google a really helpful definition. For me anyway, it's like someone flips on a movie in my head at random times. Usually it's times when I'm already feeling anxious. Other times they seem to come out of no where. Hiking in the Grand Canyon? Here's a high definition short film of your kid slipping over the edge and his skull exploding on a boulder. About to fall asleep? What happens if your car falls off a bridge into a river and I'm knocked unconscious and can't unbuckle Perrin from the car seat? (Spoiler: I bought one of those window-breaking, seatbelt-cutting tools) Most of the thoughts are ridiculous. But the thing about mental illness is it doesn't make sense- that's kind of the whole issue. And I haven't found any way to stop them. I can't "pause" the movie playing. I can't look away or see something else. It's just there. And I can tell myself that it's not real and not happening and not likely to ever happen, but it's still there. And that shit gets old. It gets tiring. Because I'm not only mentally dealing with all the shit that's actually happening in my life, but also dealing with the whole alternate universe were the worst possible things are constantly happening.
   A common coping mechanism is to try and prevent the bad thing in the alternate universe from happening in the real, which can lead to all kinds of bizarre behaviors. But the thing is, I didn't experience intrusive thoughts (at least not to this extent) until I had Perrin. Which kind of throws a whole monkey wrench into the mix because one thing I've always tried to be very aware of is making certain I'm not parenting from a place of trauma, which I plan on making a whole other post about at some point. But anyway, I have this very strong desire to "cope" with my thoughts by avoiding the shit out of everything. You can't fall off a mountain if you never hike; your kid can't be abducted if you never let them out of your sight. That's almost a really shitty limerick. And don't get me wrong, I would be THRILLED if I never had to drive over a large river again (looking at you, Kansas River, that I have to cross like 5 times every day). But man that would be unfair to Perrin.
    So instead, I watch my weird little brain movies. And I feel the adrenaline (which my body already sucks at regulating anyway), and my jaw hurts and I feel tired. And I lie awake at night sometimes because the movies just won't stop. Sometimes I have to hold my breath and look away, but Perrin has managed to climb REALLY high. Or he wants to go on an upside down rollercoaster for the first time, so I hold on to his little knee because I don't quite trust the safety bars to fit him, even though I know there is nothing I could do to keep him in his seat. And it's really, really awful. But I want him to ride roller coasters, and take his bike up and down the block, and play in the fire pit and climb trees and do all those things I did when I was a kid. Perrin wants to get certified to scuba when he turns 10, and at this point I am about 98% convinced he will be eaten by a shark. But I will sign him up for scuba class the day he turns 10 because honestly it does sound like a whole lot of fun and I would hate for him to miss out on that, or anything else for that matter, just because his mom is a little "off". If anything, it's been a really good lesson on being very aware of my own issues and making sure I am not passing those on to him. It just happens to be excruciatingly uncomfortable for me. But life in general tends to be extremely uncomfortable for me, so it would be a real shame to put any weight into that on Perrin's account.

I Still Exist

  I have 7 unpublished draft posts that have been lingering here for a while. Seven. It was easy to post regularly when I was trapped under a nursing baby for 20 hours a day, but these days it's just so much harder to find the time. But I have been trying very hard for about 2 years now to work on developing my voice- mostly in terms of learning how to enforce boundaries with other people. But sitting down with my thoughts, writing them out, that is a kind of awareness of my voice that also does me a lot of good. So I'm going to try to get back into it. And I might as well put it out there, in case anyone else can glean anything from it as well.
  In a lot of ways, I have gotten to know myself much better over the past few years. And now that I'm figuring out who I am, I how I got here, I'd like to put more energy into who I am becoming. And like I have written about previously Becoming takes time and can get quite messy. But I've recently made it to the place where I feel healthy enough to timidly try and establish relationships again. Please know I still absolutely suck at it and by try I mean dip my pinky toe in the water and then run away. But I want to be very mindful about how I'm interacting with other people, because let's face it- I'm not very good at it yet. Practice makes perfect. And for now this is the only kind of practice I feel comfortable with. One sided, yes. But I'm especially terrible at taking things in in a healthy way, and this allows me to put energy out there while being able to carefully receive what comes back in a way that doesn't overwhelm me at the moment. So I'm just going to sit around practicing having feelings and shit, and then practice writing them down, and then maybe one day I can actually interact with actual humans again.

Can there be too much adventure?

    Sit down and buckle up, because I have a story about the vacation from hell. It's been a hot second since I posted anything, because life, but this is too good not to share in detail. We started out with a simple premise- we would take a family vacation to Denver for spring break. Nothing too extravagant- I would have work on Monday and Tuesday, so just a few days. Maybe see the city, check out Rocky Mountain National Park, go snowboarding. It's only an 8 hour drive. We found a great AirBnB in the city. Your basic family roadtrip. We booked everything about 6 weeks in advance- it is spring break, after all. Then we settled in and anticipated our first vacation in 4 years that wasn't for family or Joey's work.
  Blizzard. Cyclone. Or some combination of those words. A big ass storm that was supposed to sweep across the Rockies the afternoon we got into Denver. We talked it over and Joey put forth the game plan- instead of leaving at 9-ish like we planned to, we get up super early and beat the storm to Denver. Then we'd at least be there and settled in a could wait out the storm. As soon as the city got going again, we'd be ready to go. Brilliant. Done. I was a *little* pissed about being woken up at the crack of dawn (before that, actually), but whatever. Let's do this. I was expecting to start my period, and sure enough, voila! But I'm prepared so I gulp down a handful of ibuprofen and stuff a bunch of tampons in my suitcase. As we are loading the car I wolfed down a bowl of cereal and asked Perrin what he wanted for breakfast. He said he wasn't hungry yet. Cool, it's about an hour earlier than he usually wakes up. No biggie. I told him he could eat in the car later. This would prove to be a fatal mistake.
   We drop off the dog, get on the road, and are all set to get into Denver half an hour before shit gets real. Then, Joey realizes he forgot his ski coat. His brand new ski coat, that bought specifically for this trip. Ugh. But I'm pretty sure you can rent them, so whatev. He mentions REI, but the why the hell am I going to buy you a ski coat when we just bought you a ski coat? An hour into it, Perrin says his stomach hurts. Ok, how about a granola bar? Nope, doesn't sound good. I try to explain that being in the car on an empty stomach makes me feel car sick, so eating might help. No go. Cool, whatever. We have to stop for gas soon anyway. About half an hour later we hear (see) the song (sign) of the Siren and Joey fills up the car while Perrin and I hit up Starbucks. He picks out a juice box (special treat, but it is vacation), a banana, and a croissant. Kid lives for croissants. I grab my coffee. We get in the car. He eats it all, as he is wont to do, and everything is peachy keen. We're making great time.
   And then it happens. He tells me his stomach hurts. He feels like he's going to throw up. I suggest a piece of peppermint gum and as I hand it back to him, it happens. A fountain of vomit. I don't understand digestive physics, but that was way more than the total volume of the juice, banana, and croissant that went in. And of course, because car safety, he's strapped in. Chest clip on nipples and straps pass the pinch test. He can't lean, he can't wiggle, he's completely immobile. We could have rolled our car and landed in a ditch and he would have been fine. But what he could not do was lean over or in anyway direct the spew of puke coming out of his body. His lap, the car seat, the car, the floor, the seat in front of him. My god, so much vomit. Luckily we were at an exit. Joey pulls off and we stop at the some podunk gas station. I go in and buy paper towels, Febreeze, which gives me migraines but isn't vomit, some trash bags, and a Big Gulp cup. Joey takes Perrin to the bathroom. It took us an hour to get to any semblance of recovery. Everything smelled. Everything was damp. But the mess was mostly relegated to a trash bag and we were able to get going, Perrin holding the Big Gulp in his lap just in case.
    Only now we were an hour behind. Which meant the storm was going to beat us to Denver. So I did what any sane, definitely not anxiety ridden person would do and booked a hotel at every small town between the state line and Denver and just canceled them as we passed. Limon, Co. That's how far we got when we caught up to the storm. We barely made it to our hotel after stopping by a grocery for microwavable burritos for dinner. We got settled, I started laundry with all the pukey stuff. Perrin got to swim. Everything was going at least ok. We had a chance to regroup. And then ya'll- the mother fucking power went out.
    You guys, I like camping. I don't like camping when I'm trying to wash puke laundry and it's 4 degrees outside with 50 mph winds. But we were inside. So there was that. We hoped it would come back on quickly, like a flicker. It did not. At some point, we resigned ourselves to the fact it wasn't coming back on any time soon. So I had the luxury of going and scooping our laundry out of the vomit and detergent soup it was sitting in in the washing machine. I put Perrin's car seat and all the padding in the shower and washed it best I could (Yes, Debra, I know about car seat cleaning and safety and fire retardants but jesus christ there was SO MUCH VOMIT and I will never regret my decision). No way to thaw our burritos, so we ate our car snacks for dinner. And the the sun set and we all went to bed at 7.
   By some miracle, they got the power back on over night. Roads were still closed for most of the day, but at least we could shower, finish the laundry, all that good stuff. So we just got to hang out at the hotel for another 8 hours. Luckily, they had a pool. So of course Perrin thought the vacation was off to great start. And Joey and I didn't necessarily mind. It was more that we are always trying to find adventure and I think it came on a little strong this time around and I'd really just like to dial it back a bit? BUT THE LESSON HERE IS THAT WE WOULD HAVE MADE IT IF I HAD INSISTED ON PERRIN EATING BEFORE GETTING IN THE CAR AND LIKE A CAR SICK BUTTERFLY, THOSE WINGBEATS HAVE REVERBERATED THROUGH OUR ENTIRE VACATION. MAKE YOUR CHILDREN EAT BREAKFAST, PEOPLE!
   But the roads finally opened, we got to Denver easy peasy, and the most of the afternoon with a trip to the aquarium. To top it all off, we finished up with dinner at the Broadway Market, which has a self-serve beer bar. Need I say more? The AirBnb (did I mention they had also lost power?) got the power back on before we arrived. So now I get to relax in a room that smells 0% like vomit, take a hot shower, and sleep without worrying about us all dying from hypothermia. Cheers!

The Buckman's Move....

               



            Kansas... we're moving to Kansas. Topeka, actually. Joey has accepted a job at Kansas State. So the Buckman's are moving East this time. The above is the extent of my Kansas references. I even checked if the movie Twister was set in Kansas. It's not. It's in Oklahoma.

My Last Year in My Twenties

   That tattoo was my birthday present to myself this year. The Velveteen Rabbit has always been one of my favorite books; mostly just due to the raw emotion portrayed in the story. I remember being a child and feeling the sadness and the worry the little rabbit felt on the dump heap. It always made me cry. But the older I got, it wasn't the discarded rabbit that brought on the tears, it was this passage: 

   I'm still not even sure I can put into words why that passage is so powerful. I suspect it's slightly different for each person who reads that. It's particularly applicable to motherhood, but that's not where I usually go with it. I think, in a lot of ways, I was "people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept."

    Look, I don't really know what the point of life is. I don't know what the point of my life is. I have no clear sense of direction- no calling, no vocational predilections, no sense of purpose that I could readily identify. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. And that can be hard- especially because I'm a high anxiety, Type A kind of gal. 

   I think in someways, to compensate for all the above, I just wanted to be there. To arrive. To be finished. To have all my goddamn ducks in a row. And I wanted (or thought that it had to be?) neat and pretty. Clean and linear and tidy. I thought my purpose in life (or the best way to deal with a lack there of), was to get my life in order with as little mess as possible, and keep it carefully and neatly arranged. Then my anxiety would be gone and the reverberant feeling that there was something there in the ether I needed to accomplish would dissipate. 

   But it didn't. If anything, it felt worse. It felt like I had squandered whatever chance there had been at the thing that I was supposed to do, but didn't know about yet. And then, despite all my effort to be neat and tidy, life kept happening. And I got dinged and scratched. And at some point, there were enough dings and scratches that I said screw it, and stopped being so careful. I started to give up being carefully kept. 

   And this feeling is still evolving. I'm still oh so terrified to make mistakes. But regardless, I keep making them, because I'm human, and with each once I can feel the seams getting a little looser. And that's okay. Because what I realized was so wrong with my perspective, with my furious scramble for whatever I thought I was accomplishing, is that it was always going to be a dead end street. It was entirely ends focused; goal oriented. You chose your path in the woods, you get to the end, and then what? 

   The Skin Horse said "You become." It's a process; not a result. Real isn't something that has a before and after. It creeps in through the cracks overtime. It is the Becoming that makes you Real. It's the bruises and the tears and the heartache and the scars. I used to think it looked ugly. I didn't understand. 

    I don't know what my goal is. I don't know what my calling is. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the time between now and death. But when you get to be Real, you don't have to worry about it quite so much. You get to enjoy Becoming. 

   I don't really like to make resolutions. New Years isn't my thing, and I've never really waxed sentimental over birthdays. But as I close out this decade, I want to remind myself to try a little harder to not try so hard. I want to do things even if I'm bad at them. I want to try things and fail. And I want to be okay existing without purpose for a bit. Because I'm starting to think the purpose is existing. 

I become.  

Adding to Our Family

     I realize I'm averaging two posts a year now, but the three jobs and a Perrin thing is kind of a time suck. I have lots of things I've wanted to put out there, but we have recent big news. We're getting a dog!

    For those of you who don't know the back story, our dog Fender passed away a few months ago. I had had him since he was 11 weeks old. I raised him, trained him, and he was the best dog imaginable. He moved around with me countless times. We had tons of adventures at the Shelby Farms dog park. He loved playing with possums and chasing deer. He was the sweetest 150 lbs. you could ask for. During my labor, he was by my side the entire time. He walked the neighborhood with me and slept next to the birth tub and ate jellybeans out of the midwives' hands. Once Perrin got here, Fender became the ideal big brother. He guarded Perrin from the ever scary vacuum cleaner. He shook whenever Perrin cried. He snuggled with all of us in our bed. And even though he was generally a little too eager on the leash for Joey and I, he walked slow and gentle whenever Perrin was the one walking him. 

    He started having trouble using the bathroom, so we took him to the vet and they discovered that he had a huge mass blocking his GI tract and putting pressure on his hip. Surgery would be incredibly expensive and he, being an 8 year old giant breed, was unlikely to survive. We thought we were going in to the vet to get some dog laxative, and we ended up not getting to take our dog home. We were all so heartbroken. 

   Joey and I had always said that after Fender we would take a break from dogs for a while. Fender was expensive to board, racked up huge vet bills, and we weren't sure we wanted to tackle all of that again anytime soon. But after a few dogless months, we realized we really missed having a dog in our family. Fender was such a good dog; he really made us realize how much a dog added to our family. Perrin is about to be four and is old enough to really be interested in the idea of training and caring for a dog. (Not that we expect him to do much of it, but it's nice that he wants to be involved). So we decided to start testing the waters of dog adoption. We had no idea how complicated it would be. 

     For anyone who doesn't know, we feel very strongly about adopting animals from shelters and rescues. So we started with the local animal shelter, PACC. They have so many amazing dogs that need homes and are often at capacity. We did some searching online and narrowed down a list of about 10 dogs that seemed like they'd be a good fit age and breed wise. We went in and spent some time checking them out and playing with a couple. We found one awesome pit mix who snuggled right up into Joey's lap. We decided to take the day to discuss it. After coming to the conclusion that we thought she would be a good fit for our family, Joey went back to the shelter the next day. Unfortunately (for us anyway) she had been adopted as well as the other dogs we had looked at. We were glad they found homes, but a little bummed since she seemed like such a good fit for our family. We decided to get our house ready and get all the necessary dog supplies (we had donated all of Fender's stuff after he died) so that once we found "the one" we cold bring them home immediately if necessary. 

     A friend of mine who fosters through a local rescue generously offered one of her kennels to us. When I went to pick it up, she mentioned a litter of puppies that were in her rescue that were out for adoption day at a local pet store. I didn't think much of it because Joey had always shown preference for adult dogs, but after mentioning it to him we decided that one of the puppies might actually be right for us. So I raced over to the pet store, only to find out that the entire litter had already been adopted. Once again, we were happy for their forever homes, but a little sad that we had missed what seemed like another great opportunity. 

    A few other puppies and dogs were also at the pet store, so I chatted with the foster workers about them for a bit. One very young puppy was labeled as an American Bulldog mix, a breed I had always been interested in. I snapped some pictures of her and the other puppies and sent them to Joey and chatted a little bit longer. That night, Joey and I decided to fill out an adoption application for her. But over the next few days, after speaking with my friend from the foster group and our roommate who is a vet tech, we started to doubt if she was really the dog we were looking for. Being so young, it was hard to tell exactly what kind of mix she was or how big she would be. She was only 9 pounds at ten weeks, so there was a very real chance she could have some terrier or other small breed in her and may not even reach 30 pounds. While she still looked beautiful and seemed to have an excellent personality, we were looking for a slightly larger dog with a less ambiguous make up. 

    That led us to look more into one of the other puppies ta the foster- a lab/shepherd mix. She was 4 1/2 months, so here features were more developed and there was less of question about what her breeds may be. She was also already 30 lbs, and obviously wasn't getting any smaller, so we knew she would be a larger sized dog. I spoke with a woman from the rescue and after discussing it, we decided that this puppy would probably be the best fit for our family. So last Saturday we were able to go spend some time with her, sign the paperwork, and bring her home! 

    Joey and I decided to make it a sort of early birthday present for Perrin, so I came home with her and surprised him. He got to take her to Pet Smart to make her tag and pick out a few toys. We're excited for her to get acclimated to our home, cats, and chickens, and to begin the process of training and socializing. Joey has never had to train a dog, and we want Perrin to feel involved in the process, so we are going to sign up for formal classes. Her foster family had named her Quinn, but after going back and forth about a handful full of names, we decided to let Perrin name her. His pick was Icky! We decided on Iki, to make it a little less weird. So here she is, our Iki.