How it Started....

Pant, pant, pant.

That has always been the sound of my summer. And then I moved to the Big Island of Hawai'i, where it is warm all year, and it became the sound of my life. 

PANT, PANT, PANT! 

This is the sound of my July. Because little Jalapeño is pregnant and is going to have puppies in less than three weeks! She is breathing for four or more as her breath marks the passage of time that is leading to our growing multi-dog family.

Everyone has a bucket list and mine is full of Golden Retrievers! Now Jalapeño is as well!

Little Jalapeño

Murphy!

One thing I have learned in my life with dogs is that you never really have any true control over what is going to happen to them. My first golden, Joker Taylor, died from cancer within a month of being screened by the vet. He had liver cancer, and not being a big drinker, never noticed his liver was not working properly until right at the end when it just wasn't working at all. Jake Kareem, my second golden also had a tragic end. But that is a story for another day. This blog is about puppies and puppy love and puppy breath and I will do my best to keep that focus and not wander (too much) down meandering paths of melancholy and stream of consciousness. 

I have never bred a dog so I did my due diligence on line. I tracked Jalapeño's heat cycles and looked for a stud. It was a bit of a challenge as this Big Island is actually quite small, not so much in stature as we do have the tallest mountain on earth, but in population both of the two and four legged variety. I finally found Murphy, a beautiful white golden from Serbia. 

They met and the rest is history. I will tell you about that at another time.