Puppies in Belgium

We're getting a puppy!

I know I know, you may think we're crazy, but Brian and I have been envious of dog-owners for a while now, thinking that it would just not be practical to get one of our own. We notice dogs everywhere, especially since moving to Amsterdam - in the city's hundreds of parks, in the grocery stores, in cafes and bars (there are no dog laws here, so dogs can go anywhere)...

Lately we've been talking a bit more seriously about it and realizing that it would not actually be insane for us to have a dog here. With me currently just volunteering part-time and with better weather in the (semi) near future, we decided it would actually be a pretty good time to have a young pup since I could spend a lot of time with it.

Things moved quickly once we came up with that conclusion. We saw a couple walking a beagle, I did some research, and the next thing we knew we were on our way to Belgium to check out a puppy farm.

It was quite a journey - a two hour train ride with two transfers to southern Holland, a 30-minute bus ride to a Dutch town called Zonder, and then a two mile walk over the border to the puppy place in Belgium. We tried to take a taxi but were informed that no taxi drivers worked on the weekend. But we had our iPhones so it was no problem to find it!

Once we got there we fell in love - the place is run by a really nice family who obviously love dogs. There were a couple of different kinds of dogs there, and you could tell they were all really well taken care of and that the parents were happy and healthy. We met several adorable beagles, but we settled on a five-week old girl we named Rocket (Rocky for short).

We thought we were just going there to look... but who were we kidding, we knew we wanted a dog and these pups were just too adorable and perfect to pass up. We get her in two weeks! Fishstick is going to be very, very excited (he is not a normal cat - he loves dogs!)!

Here are a few pictures:

A few of the three-week old puppies sleeping in their bed

Brian holding our new puppy

Our puppy sleeping with the youngsters

More updates to come soon...

- Krista