It's been while and I've finally decided it's time to properly try this thing.
So here goes ... The Spook Diaries - Introduction. At this point I should state that this isn't a tale of horror, though it could possibly become a tail of horror - time will tell, and the next few lines will explain the pun.
Over the last six months or so my wonderful wife has been bugging me to get a puppy. If you know Dani, you'll probably know what her 'bugging' is like. It's funny. And it goes on. And on. And on.
Dani (on a very regular basis, and at random times) "Can we have a monkey?" Me "No". "A pig?" "No." "A llama? An alpaca? A goat? An elephant? A puppy" and the list went on. At some point, apparently, I said "yes". Fortunately that turned out to be to a dog, it could have been so much worse.
The result of that .... Spook.
She's a (an?) Huskita. A cross between a Husky father and an Akita mother, and she's gorgeous, intelligent and is learning so fast.
I think we were kind of destined to get her too. We decided early on that we wanted a girl. Dani had done a lot of research on Huskitas, and other breeds for that matter, and it seemed to us that in our situation a female Huskita would tick every box.
The search then began. Getting a full-grown, or adolescent, dog isn't too hard, but puppies sell fast. However Dani found a woman in Pontefract with 11 puppies available, and, from the photos of the puppies and the parent dogs, we realised that one of those would be perfect for us and Dani rang the owner. She wasn't a breeder, which appealed to us, and she still had one - just one - girl left, as they were going fast.
We organised a meet-and-greet with the owner for a week or so later back in late July and set off. On the way Dani got a message from the owner. Now the thing is we really wanted a black dog, or predominantly black, but the owner only had a red (I think that's the technical name for, basically, beige/rusty) girl. Please correct me if I'm wrong! Anyway, I digress ...
The reason the owner messaged was that a black girl pup was now available as she'd turned down a guy who had been talking with her on the phone and was intending to have Spook. The owner got a bad vibe from him and wanted all her puppies to go to good homes. She actually turned down a fair few people. At that time, by the way, Spook was nameless. So wow, suddenly we had the chance - totally unexpectedly - to get a black dog.
When we got there and met the pups and the pup's parents, they were stunning. The owner, her kids, Dani and I got on so well too. The girl we originally intended to go for was truly lovely and we would have been overjoyed to have her, but this little black furry potato just won Dani's heart in an instant (and yeah, ok, I confess mine too and to be honest I'm not really a dog person). So the deal was done, the deposit paid, and plans planned for timings to get her home, etc..
And so on August 11th, the kids, Dani and I went off to see Spook. The kids thought it was just so they could meet her as, as far as they were concerned, we weren't bringing her home until she was 8 weeks old, on August 15th. But in best Dani and Greg fashion we had other ideas and had already arranged with the owner to bring her home a few days early so the kids could spend time with her. They were going to be away on a holiday with their mum and step-dad when we were supposed to get Spook. We had the owner have a chat with the kids ... she said "Since you've been so good, and Spook clearly loves you, would you like to take her home today?" The kids, after a tentative "can we really?" were made up and absolutely overjoyed, and Spook came to live with us. Permanently. The cat's not impressed, but that's another story.
To finish off, you may wonder, or not, why her name is "Spook". We were really struggling with what to call her. We felt it couldn't end in any of the sounds of names we currently have around us (Dani, Greg, Amelia, Connor, Purdy) as calling those would be potentially confusing. It seems the last sound of a dog's name is the most important, or so some clever bugger (Dani) says.
During the drive to meet her for the first time we were debating names, and then started talking about the dire wolves in Game of Thrones, of which we're both huge fans (the show and the wolves). Nymeria is lovely - but ends as Amelia's name, so nope. Lady, nah, too simple. Ghost I loved, but he's white and it just didn't seem right. Then out of the blue I said "Spook" and that was that. We were sold on it.
Her dad Spy (Husky) and her mother Mia (Akita) are both stunning, intelligent and so very gentle. Spook will be too. We know it.
And this is Spook today, 10 weeks old and nearly ready to start walking. Training and other exciting stuff to follow in later episodes!
