6 weeks old

We brought Eli home yesterday and he has already begun to torture Joe by following him around, trying to chew on his toys, and climbing all over him. Joe's been grunting his displeasure but has been very kind to him so far. He's already learned to love to sleep on the couch (big shocker). Eric appears to be holding up well.

5 weeks

And then this morning Eric was walking Joe past the neighbor's house again and the neighbor said that he thought Eli was going to be bigger than Joe! Eric called me giggling hysterically. We didn't really plan on another 100 lbs lab. We thought we'd have a nice normal 75 pounder. I don't think our house is big enough for 200 lbs of excitable lab...

Today we also learned that Eli comes home with us next weekend. He'll be 7 weeks old.

Then Eli was born

Then one day Eric & I were running with Joe and we passed our neighbors house where Joe was born and our neighbor said, "Hey, it looks like you could use another dog" and Eric and I slowed down to hear what he had to say. We decided that although it would be absolutely insane to add another animal to our zoo, we were going to do it. Two days later, Eli was born.

First there was Joe

One morning in late November 2003, Eric and I came home from grocery shopping to find we had been robbed. After calling the police, we decided to walk around the neighborhood to see if the thieves had dropped anything. We circled our block and on our way back towards our house we passed our neighbor. He had 6 black lab puppies in the yard. We stopped to talk to him and Eric asked him which puppy was his favorite. He said "this one" and motioned towards the calm puppy sitting at his feet. Eric and I went home and talked and decided we would take that nice calm puppy. Well, we brought him home and like a week later Eric called me at work and said "You will NOT believe what I just found". It appeared that Joe had worms. We took care of the worm issue and discovered that the worms were actually what was keeping Joe so calm. Joe, originally the runt, grew into a 100 lbs sweetie. He was expelled from doggy kindergarten and 86'd from doggy day care before he was one year old. I went to pick him up from doggy day care one evening and the owner told me that he had literally bounced off the walls...all 4 feet on the wall and pushed off. That's my puppa!