Meet Max...

...the latest member of the Lilley clan who joined us Sunday afternoon...

For a few years now, Brian and I have talked about getting a second dog. Murphy, our rottweiler/border collie cross, has been with us since November 1997. She will be 12 years old next month and we thought (ok, I thought and eventually Brian came around to my way of thinking) that a second dog would be a good idea to ease the pain of separation from Murphy that is coming sooner rather than later...

Last week Avery, who turns seven on Saturday, came to me and said, "Mommy the only thing I want for my birthday is a puppy..."...spoken very winningly and with sad, puppy dog eyes I might add...

So I spent last week looking around and trying to convince Avery that getting an older dog might be a better way to go. Without going into the gory details of what happens to dogs who don't find homes, I told her that quite often older dogs don't get new families because everyone always wants puppies.

She didn't buy it.

On Saturday morning, Brian was talking with a neighbour and jokingly told her that if she knew of anyone who had puppies for sale to let us know...

Joke's on him...she did know someone. And gave him the phone number. Which he called. And told the guy on the phone that he would like the last puppy he had. (See, he tells everyone that the reason we have Murphy is because of me, things I said...he's not pinning this one on me, people!)

So yesterday we piled the kids into the car and told them we were going out. "Where?" they all wanted to know. "It's a surprise," we said.

Just over an hour later, we pulled into a driveway, got out of the car and met the most adorable little black lab puppy and fell instantly in love...

Look into those eyes...come on, you're falling for him too, aren't you?

On the drive home we tossed around a bunch of names (including street names as we passed under their signs) and finally settled on Max. (Jamie wanted to give him the middle name of "Pablo", but the others quickly nixed that idea)

Murphy has accepted the pup with all the grace of the grand ol' dame she is...and it's very cute to watch little Max following along behind Murphy and copying everything she does. And I've never met such a quiet little dog...we actually slept through the night and didn't hear him whimper once...he slept right through the night...

Maybe he can train the kids to do that...