Victoria Stilwell - The Ultimate Guide to Raising a Puppy: How to Train and Care for Your New Dog

My beautiful, big brown dog lifts up her wise old head and looks at me with kind, loving eyes. These two intensely dark pools have seen sixteen years of life, a long time for a dog, and as I gaze into them I recall all the wonderful memories we have had together. Summer days exploring the North Georgia mountains, family birthday celebrations, and winter nights spent in front of the fire. Those eyes have seen our family grow through the years, witnessing the good times and commiserating with the hard ones. Sadie has been with us every step of the way. She is the rock we can always depend on to lighten our load, to greet us warmly when we come home from work, and to give us love.

Sadie came into our lives when she was five years old, a gentle girl who seemed wise beyond her years. She is a calm dog in the house and a wild huntress outside. She sees the world through her magnificent nose and is driven by secret odors that lead her on intense investigations I wish I could understand. Sadie knows the neighborhood news before I do. She knows what dogs have passed by, what animals have been in the area, and who has been jogging that morning. If I could speak her language, I know we would gossip for hours.

I didnt know Sadie when she was a puppy, but I can only imagine how beautiful she was. Sadie lived with an elderly lady who had recently lost her husband. The family hoped to ease their mothers loneliness by getting her a companion, and even though an energetic, excitable Labrador puppy was not necessarily the best idea for an elderly person, what Sadie lacked in exercise and social experiences with other dogs, she got back a hundred-fold in love. Scarlet raised Sadie for five years until Scarlet sadly passed away. A week later a trainer friend of mine, Joyce Hagan, brought the gorgeous chocolate Labrador to our house to see if we wanted to adopt her. Sadie never left.

I have no doubt that Scarlets love and kindness in those important puppy and adolescent years makes Sadie so good with people, just as I am certain that Sadies lack of canine social experiences makes her uncomfortable around other dogs. I see a lot of her past by watching her behavior in the present, but I wish I could have been there at the beginning when my beautiful girl came into the world. I can only imagine what she was like as a puppy. Cheeky, inquisitive, energetic, loving, impulsiveshe must have brought such joy to everyone. I wish I had known her then and stolen five more years with the best dog in the world.

Sadie is one of the reasons Im writing this book. I want to explore what she must have been like as a puppy and in doing so take you on a journey into your puppys world. So Im going back in time, to where Sadie started out on her amazing journey, sixteen years ago.