So you know that we have 4 daughters 5 and younger. But what you don’t probably know is we are masochists and we wanted to add more work and stress to our lives by getting a puppy!. After we lost of 2 Cocker Spaniels 2 years ago we have been without a dog and ended up getting cats(one still with us). Agreeing to wait on the puppy till the kids were older I just figured I would settle with dealing with the cats and try him to be more like a dog. Which of course is no easy chore. I think Denise must have taken pity on me because one day she said she would like to get a puppy for the girls to play with, I was stunned.
We set off to figure out what breed we wanted. I was really pushing for a Bernese Mountain Dog, but the life expectancy of them is only 7 years right now. Having lost 5 animals in the last 3 years I didn’t feel that was a good breed to bring into our home, considering our kids know way too much about death already. So in our pursuit of a breed we came across the Golden retrievers which I have always thought were beautiful breeds. Turns out they are also excellent with children and other animals. So we went down the path of looking at breeders and found the puppy for us. We did look for a couple of months for a 1-2 year old dog so we didn’t have to worry about house breaking and chewing of kids toys and clothing, but had no luck finding one.
Introducing Tinkerbelle (Belle) Beck (she was born 3/28/07)
Jon's warped reality 
Congratulation on the new addition to the family, John. We’ve got 4 dogs and 2 cats here now, so I’m glad to read that you’ve added a dog to your household!