Recently my parents had to put our family dog down. Max was 15 years old and really was not doing well. 15 years, though, is a long time. Half my life, we had Max. Then one day my mom came home from lunch and found him hemorrhaging and that was the last straw. It was really sad, but he had a good, long life so we were all glad for that. I knew my parents would get another dog, we’ve always had a dog, and I’m sure the place just felt empty without Max around. My mom got wind of someone who knew someone who knew someone who had a litter of puppies. And one day last week my brother and I got a suprise email with photos of a new puppy.

My dad sent an email to my niece, Stephanie, asking her to name the new puppy. I’m sure she was thinking of a lot of good names, not like when she was really little and wanted to name their cat Pikachu. My brother had to gently tell her that Pikachu was a… uh.. “silly” name. This weekend Stephanie named the puppy Dakoda. I think that’s a good name.

Also, at first I thought that Dakoda was a yellow lab puppy, but my mom said that his mom was a chocolate lab and his dad was a white shepard. Either way, he’s going to be a big dog!