My wife has that disease where everything must be perfectly clean and in its place. But the love for a Labrador as turned her into a slob. We promised our daughter a dog. I had always had a fondness for Labrador retrievers. So when discussions came up about dogs I obviously transferred that love onto my daughter so when it came time to choose a dog the Labrador was the only consideration. The only problem was that my wife was a neat freak and the dog shedding was a big issue.
After searching high and low and all across the Internet I finally came across a breeder in Colorado named Zafari Labs (Zafarilabs.com). It was just one day before I went searching online that this breeder had decided to put this dog up for sale. When I saw the picture on the Internet I just knew he was the one. She was originally going to keep him for herself but had decided that the number of dogs that she had was getting to be a little too overwhelming. He was 12 weeks old and had a look that made you melt. His name was Charlie.
My daughter at the time was infatuated with the Disney movie Life Is Rough. The star of the movie was a big yellow Labrador retriever named Tyco. So as you might guess Charlie's name was changed to Tyco. To this day my wife and I still say he looks like a Charlie so his AKC name is Tyco Charlie. Tyco has proven to be a very special dog. His trip to us from the breeder was a story in itself. The plane was diverted to Rochester, New York. The folks at Continental Airlines were just amazing. An attendant cared for him and another dog all night long. The attendant called us almost every hour to tell us how much fun he was and how much we were going to enjoy having him as part of our family.
When we finally picked him up the next day at the airport he was a complete surprise to my daughter. We told her that we had to go to the airport to pick up a piece of lost luggage for her auntie Kimmy and that I had heard that J. Lo was going to be at the airport at the same time and that we might be able to see her and get her autograph. It was the only way that I could get her to go into the car and take a trip to the airport.
When Tyco came out of his kennel he was just the happiest little puppy you could ever imagine all 25 pounds of him. He couldn't get enough of the attention that everyone was giving him. He was 12 weeks old when he received him. He is now 21 months old and weighs 92 pounds. He is such a mush puppy. He has been such a lovable dog that we figured if one is this much fun 2 has to be better. So approximately 5 months later we decided to get a second dog from the same breeder. This time a female. Her name was Lonesome Dove but that sounded like such a sad name we decided to name her Dakota.
At first she was a real piece of work. She brought out the puppy in Tyco that we never saw before. She has more energy than any five dogs I've ever known. After about six weeks my wife was ready to pull the hair out of her head and return her to the breeder. But, the breeder encouraged us to work with her and said that by time she was two years old she would be our best friend. So with a lot of patience and a lot of love and a lot of hard work Dakota has turned in to the most lovable dog. She is now 16 months old. She is amazing to watch as small children approach her to pet her.
She has an undeniable instinct that's telling her that this is a very small and fragile little person and she needs to be gentle. We also have a family that lives two doors down from us that has a severely retarded child now 27 years old. Dakota will stand by her side and make sure that she doesn't wander off when in her presence. You're probably thinking how did such a little terror at 3 months old turn into such a sensitive and intuitive 15 month old. Well let me tell you she has her moments. She is instinctively a retriever and loves birds. Just the other day while I was cleaning her and Tyco's feet before having them enter the house she looked at the open garage door and then looked at me and as I was saying Don't You Dare she took off like a shot and went to the lake behind our house. After 10 seconds or so she came back and looked at Tyco as if to say aren't you coming with me, and when I said to Tyco he wasn't going she just looked at him and then looked at me and took off. In the lake she likes to crouch in the vegetation that grows in the Latoya shelf waiting for birds. I just can't bring myself to get mad at her because she's so beautiful to look at when she's out in the lake. She could easily be one of those dogs on a calendar.
This weekend my wife and daughter are in Colorado visiting her sister in law. It just so happens that the breeder lives 10 minutes away from my sister-in-law. So my wife and daughter went to visit the breeder and to see Tyco's mother. We knew that the breeder had two litters back in December. The first one was from Tyco’s mother and Dakota's father. The second litter was from Dakota's brother and Tyco's half-sister. No sooner had they gotten back from the visit I was getting e-mails with pictures of all the puppies and the one that was to become our third dog. My wife now wants to sell the house and move to Colorado where we could have a big piece of land where all the dogs could run freely. I know this sounds a little bit extreme but this is how three Labradors have affected our lives and I wouldn't trade one moment of it for anything.
