Quincy at one year

We are celebrating another birthday in our household; Quincy is one year old today. This birthday is a little more low key; no bowling alley, family party or even cake. See, the youngest child always gets screwed. Believe me, I should know.

After our first dog, Cosmo, died we waited a while before we got another one. Most of the wait was because of me; I didn't want to jump into training a new dog with two young kids at home. I think I held out for about for about 5 months before I gave in and agreed to getting a new dog. Hey, at least I got us through the winter without having to train him outside!

So, Jenn did some research and found a breeder about 90 minutes away that had a litter of Golden Retrievers due soon. Long story short, we got this picture of the litter in our e-mail in January.


I have no idea which one is Quincy but, based on his personality now, I'm going to guess he is the one with his head on top of all the other dogs. Now, if there was a dog chewing up a toy doll in this picture, it would make it much easier to pick him out.

A short time later we went out the the breeder to choose which dog we wanted to take home a few weeks after that. Now look at these little guys. How do you choose?


I'm positive Quincy is the lighter dog in the middle with his tongue partially hanging out. He is a little darker now, but not a whole lot. Look how tiny he was back in March.



It's funny, his ears are still quite a bit darker than the rest of his body. Now, however, his one ear is about the size of his whole body back then. At least is seems that way.

The Easter Bunny brought the dog to the kids this year. This is Jenn bringing him in after we 'found' him out by front door after we conveniently had somewhere to go. Look at the size of his paws!


It didn't take long for him to make himself at home. Our daughter wasn't too fond of him the first day. She was used to our 11 year old golden who mostly lounged around the house. Quincy was a flying fur ball that wanted to chase everything; including her. She warmed up to him pretty quickly, though she still will say she misses Cosmo.

We knew we might have a problem with size on this dog. Everyone who saw him would remark on how huge his paws where; the vet, the groomer, our friends, and sister (in-law to me). All these people knew what they were talking about. This shot is two months later than the one above.


Here he is checking for crumbs at the kitchen table. He is not standing on anything at this point. This is when I started wondering if we should have named him Clifford.

He is kind of trained now. He listens most of the time, but he still likes to steal things and make us chase him. Maybe he is trying to tell us he needs more excitement in his life. I don't blame him, this winter has not been nice. It's been too cold to do much playing out there.

Today I took the kids to the pet store to buy Quincy a few things for his birthday. Daughter picked out a squeaky turtle and son a football. Here Quincy seems to be using the turtle as a pillow, but he is actually rolling around on it.


I guess you can say he likes his turtle.

For the parting shot I would like to show you how he let's us know he is ready to come in the house.


This is our kitchen window. The base of that wind is about chest high on me. I still can't believe that he can reach it. And let me tell you, when he does that in the dark it freaks me out. He looks like some kind of demon, ghost dog.

Thanks for reading. Happy birthday Quincy!