Getting Back To The Basics: Tucker

It's probably time for me to make my announcement here about the newest member of the Hamilton-Coon family. On Friday, December 6th, I flew down to Nashville, TN to pick up my precious cargo - a puppy we decided to name Tucker. I won't go into the stressful details of that trip, but long story short I made it back to Seattle on Sunday, December 8th. I flew first class on the way home with him - best decision ever. No regrets.

There are many reasons I decided to sprinkle a little chaos into my life. One is for selfish reasons - my girls are 9 months apart. NINE months. That means I'm going to have my two girls going through end of life stages together. If I could change that time line I would have given a 4-6 year gap between Sadie and my 2nd, but this is how life dealt the cards. Plus I like dogs. They're the best thing since sliced bread.

I've gotten lots of advice about adding a 3rd. Some key ones I took to heart. Make it a boy and get him before Violet turns 5. The reasoning for that is I already have two girls and adding a 3rd bitch, especially with Violet, would be a horrible idea. And when they hit 5 they begin to become less tolerant of other dogs overall and less likely to accept the new comer. Violet turned 4 in September. We moved into a bigger house with a huge yard. Finances are tight because we just bought a new house but excluding that, the timing is now.

I had a short list of prospective parents to my future puppy. I wanted a healthy pup physically, but even more important than that is he have a rockin' personality. No jackasses allowed. I already have one fickle creature named Violet - I wanted to minimize my chances of getting a troubled terrier personality. I found out a dog on my short list sired a litter with a bitch of sound temperament. I looked. I spoke with the breeders. I thought. I went for it.

In addition to the sound temperament, I wanted him to be sound physically, to the best of our ability to detect, as I want to do agility with this little boy. There were two boys in the litter and I didn't care which one I brought home - maybe even none at all if they weren't a good fit. But the breeder did right by us and picked out a little boy with an awesome personality. He's responsive to the girls signals and gives lots of clear signals himself. Respectful of space and usually a very polite little guy. And he really rolls with the girls' punches. I just love his personality. Not a snarky bone in his body

His coloring is red smut, meaning his red coat has black ticking in it. I think he'll be bigger than the girls. I think he'll probably be about 16" at the shoulder and weigh somewhere around 38 lbs.

Violet has been doing well. Every day she gets better with him. We started out with Tucker being mostly separate from the girls and have allowed them more and more mingle time as we go along. I was lucky enough to take three weeks off to help with the integration.