Meet Mabel!

I am so excited to introduce you to our new family member, Mabel!

She’s a mini golden doodle and is pure sugar.

The Surprise

A few weekends ago I shared that we gave the kids the surprise of their life on our way home from Asheville when we detoured to “fill out an application for a puppy.”

While “waiting for the paperwork” the kids got to play with the CUTEST golden doodle puppy named “Paprika.” They were on cloud 9. And after a few minutes of watching their pure explosive joy we said “hey guys, that is YOUR puppy!” and oh my gosh I am so glad I had my camera going at this moment because it’s a memory I will cherish forever. (And will absolutely share this goodness on Instagram.)

Even though they were both in complete shock, adding a dog to our family again has been a discussion in our home daily for the past 18 months, maybe longer! Caroline really started begging constantly in 2nd grade for a dog and created I think 3 slideshow presentations pleading her case for why we needed one (they were rather compelling, by the way).

However, we (and by “we” I mean “I”) was just not ready, so we held them off by promising we would get a dog when we moved to our next home.

And then we moved to the next home in February.

For the first few months, we lived through a home renovation and life was pure chaos. Matt and I were able to gain a little more time on cashing in on our promise by presenting them with a “puppy points system” where they could earn or lose points — with the goal of 1,000 points for getting a puppy!

They had been working hard to accrue points and were at 750 points when Matt and I secretly sealed the deal. We had really hoped a puppy would join our family before school started and were excited that the timing worked out perfectly.

MABEL’S NAME

The day before we had 4 hours of quality family time floating down the river. During our adventure, we got to discuss some fun topics…one of which was revisiting our running list of puppy name contenders. By some miracle, we had narrowed down the names to a shortlist and ultimately decided we should meet our dog before we named her one of the following:

• Lotty
• Marley
• Poppy
• Penny
• Roxy
• Goldie
• Mabel
• Piper

And upon meeting our puppy, both kids immediately agreed she is a “Mabel,” which I was excited about because that was among my top 3 favorite names!

Puppy Training & bringing her home

Puppy training was something we knew we needed some help with. We were spoiled with Charlie, the most incredible dog ever, and really wanted another well-mannered dog. And let’s be honest, I am the one who is home the most and will primarily be responsible for taking care of our dog — and I don’t know how to properly train a dog!

We went back and forth on whether to put Mabel through puppy preschool before we brought her home or wait until she was a little older and ultimately decided to knock it out early.

So we will be picking up our sweet girl THIS WEEKEND and bringing her home with us forever! She’ll be 11 weeks old (and hopefully be on her way to being potty-trained, crate-trained, and familiar with basic commands like sit, stay, and come).

It’s been the longest few weeks of our lives and we are all SO ready to bring our sweet girl home and introduce Sprinkles to her new best friend.

So much more to come.