Thanks for such great and quick replies! Yup, so far 3 people have said we have an Iams commercial in the making.
The stories on the girls...Well, my wife and I were married in November, 2000, and we decided that we would start looking for a dog after the honeymoon. My wife loves dalmations, and we found Sadie through a friend. Her mom is a dal, and her dad was assumed to be the registered black lab next door. So we're pretty sure she's a 50/50 mix. We picked her out from a "home litter", and she became our baby girl last December. She has been a wonderful dog, and I couldn't ask for better.
My new job lets me off the last week of the year for holiday, so Sadie and I spent a lot of time working out the pecking order, the rules, and just where the best rubs and scratches need to be. Now, she is a beautiful girl of almost 14 months. She is a sweetheart, and wonderful with everybody. She hardly barks, has never growled, and is a "talker". She makes a series of grunts and coos to get her message across.
Well, this past November we started talking about getting a sister for Sadie, but she is so reserved, we decided that we should look for a younger girl, so that Sadie would be the older, and have more potential to be higher up in the family pack. So, my mother-in-law calls about an article for free lab-mix puppies. We decided we'd look, and that we'd bring Sadie to help with the decision. Sure enough, we ended up bringing Cincy home that day. She was a little nervous when we got her, and Sadie at first did not want to have anything to do with her. I started to think maybe we made too hasty a decision. But Sadie came to understand that she was not being replaced, and that a little playmate could be pretty cool. Now they play almost constantly. Cincy (11 weeks) is still learning the ropes: "potty is outside," Sadie does not always like to be chewed on, sit, down, come, stand, and wait (boy that one is hard at dinnertime!). She is doing well, still learning, but seems to be catching on quickly.