"Honey, I'm pregnant"

Err... not in the traditional sense of the word. In all other ways, yes, I was pregnant and expecting! Each day I was flooding hubby's mailbox with listings of prospective babies from www.petfinder.com . It has almost been a nine month wait too. Nine months of thinking "Are we ready yet?", reading books about dog breeds, doggie care, working out finances, looking for pet-friendly housing and ofcourse hours... endless hours of imagining the bliss of walking hand-in-hand by Lake Michigan with a little (or large), happy tail-wagger, strutting by our side!

The easiest part of the whole process was looking through the websites and falling in love with all the adorable faces. Each time we volunteered at Chicago Canine Rescue, we'd come back sighing and praying for 'the right time' and 'the right dog' to come soon. Walking the dogs at CCR was great practice. With both hubby and I struggling to control the 80 pound dogs, we knew we'd have to keep the "I want a big chubbu!" for a later stage. As cute as St. Bernards are, and as much as i'd like to hug the big fella and sleep every night, if Little Me has to show an id just to play a round of Pool (sigh, yes... I get harassed each time) and move a couch with a whole lot of huffing and puffing... I really didn't want to imagine what a little huff and a little puff from the big fella (however playful it might be) would to do me! And as daring as I am, I didn't want another incident when 'Hubby the Great' drops the leash coz the dog is too big and excited, and 'Little Me' has to grab the leash and sit on the ground to get my body weight to counteract the excitement of a 7 month old Dalmatian/Pointer pup!

After much debate, we decided to drop the idea of a Retriever/Lab pup for a first dog and started looking for a medium sized breed that would be just as great a family dog. Hubby's only requirements were that the dog should be bigger than a pomeranian, not the snappy, yappy kinds and athletic enough to be an occasional running partner. All the reading resulted in me spotting the English Springer Spaniel. Medium sized, athletic, great temperament and something about the white & black/brown markings just made me fall in love with the breed. The tough part though, since we wanted to adopt, was that Springer Spaniel pups rarely turn up at adoption centers. So we expanded our search to include Spaniel mixes.

Male? Female?... Female please :) Not that there's anything wrong with male dogs. I grew up with an adorable American Eskimo Dog (always thought he was a mini Samoyed.. my 'Snowy' totally had the 'Samoyed smile', amidst this recent research, I chanced upon the Eski and discovered Snowy's real breed). But I can't help being biased towards a female dog. For several reasons actually. Firstly, I always thought my first child would be a girl :) What better way to make it happen than adopting a little darling! Secondly, I owed it to myself to bring home a female pup, care for her and give her a good life. I'm still haunted by some mistakes that I feel I can never forgive myself for. As a child I fell in love with a stray pup, took her away from her litter and brought her home, only to come back home from school one day and find out that my mother had abandoned the pup on the streets again because she felt a female pup would be very problematic to look after. 'Misty', I think I called her. I never saw her again. I've never stopped saying sorry.

"Well, since I can't undo what happened 15-16 yrs ago, I can most certainly bring home a bratty little female pup and fill the void!" So there started our hunt for a female, spaniel family member. And amidst the chaos of finding a new apartment to move into and subletting our old apartment, on 6th September 2008, the Gods smiled and we spotted little 'Denice'!