Finding Knox

Oh, y’all left me some fantastic post suggestions! I’ll start at the beginning, a very good place to start {name that movie.} Well, actually a little after the beginning that Tiffany requested. The very first beginning for Jason and I has already been written about on a {short-lived} blog penned by Jason himself. Basically, I went up to Windy Gap to visit Lynn Barclay who was on assignment there for the month of June. I arrived on a Tuesday evening midway through dinner. Lynn took me over to meet the rest of the assigned team, Jason shook my hand and the rest is history…You can read about how things progressed here and here.

Anyway, this post is all about finding Knox, as requested by Rebecca Jo.

I didn’t really grow up with a dog as a pet. We were more cat people. Our family had two brief stints with dogs but that’s another post in itself. My point is that I never really had a dog in that picturesque sense of a buddy, a pal, a girl’s best friend. And oh, how I wanted one! I wanted one all through college, I wanted one after college and briefly flirted with the idea of getting a miniature something in my mid twenties. I might have even harbored fantasies of carrying around said miniature dog in a purse. Just call me Paris Hilton.

Cut to January of 2007, Jason and I had been married for about five months, had recently moved to Abilene, TX and were settled in a house with a legitimate fenced in back yard. Uh huh, you see where this is going, right? The yearnings and the longings for a dog of our very own started. You could find me in the pet section of Books a Million {Abilene didn’t and still doesn’t have a Barnes & Noble, curses!}, online poring over dog breeds trying to find just the right one for us, on the phone with my dog owning friends getting the scoop on all things doggy. I was serious. Jason will tell you that he knew I was really serious about getting a dog when my desktop background was a picture of some puppies.

Who knew that all it took was changing the picture on my laptop screen? Sucker.

In early February, Jason finally agreed to getting a puppy but asked that we wait until after Sarah Jo & John’s wedding in March so that we could give crate training and such our complete and undivided attention. I rejoiced and all was right with the world.

On February 14th, completely unbeknownst to me, Jason went to the Abilene Animal Shelter to look at puppies as a Valentine’s Day present for me. And here’s what he found. Behold, the first ever picture of our freckle faced monster.

See our little guy in the middle of the pile? Believe it or not, those were his siblings. The mother was a Border Collie who had been brought in to the shelter while she was still pregnant. Judging from the looks of the litter, mama was a ho. I’m just sayin’, is all!

Jason didn’t come home that night with Knox. While he thought he would be pretty great for us {and had our friend Molly’s assurance that I would love him}, he knew that being part of the picking process was important to me. So instead, he came home with a dog bed and you can find my reaction to it here.

Jason showed me the picture of the possible puppy on his cell phone and I promptly declared him adorable and perfect and mine. He assured me that we could go look at him the next morning before work and that if I wanted him, we would get him. That night, after getting ready for bed, I walked into our bedroom only to see a giant round lump where Jason should be. That’s right, Jason was in our bed with the dog bed as well. The reason? “If I’m going to be this dog’s Alpha Dog then my scent needs to be the predominant one.” He was actually right, I just wasn’t anticipating sharing my romantic Valentine’s night with a dog bed.

In talking about getting a dog, we had already determined that if it was a boy we would name it Knox, short for Knoxville- home to the Tennessee Volunteers. I suggested Hill as a middle name, short for Chapel Hill- home to my Tarheels. And the adorable golden puppy had a name, Knox Hill Petree.

The next morning we headed down to the shelter and I watched our puppy carefully as he interacted with his brothers and sisters. I knew that I needed to be watching for aggressive or passive behavior and I was delighted to see the latter. When I finally picked him up, he nuzzled down into my shoulder. And. I. Was. Done. Fifteen minutes later, Knox Hill was ours.

And then we didn’t get to sleep late for the next six months. We loved him anyway.