My Boys

Meet Beau, one of the two Shetland Sheepdog puppies we've just adopted. Beau is a sable Sheltie, very active and playful, and gorgeous.

This is his brother, Shadow, who is a mostly-black tri-color Sheltie. He's the runt of the litter, and very quiet and sweet, and since I instantly fell in love with him we decided to adopt him as well.

The backstory: last year both of our elderly dogs passed away. I always stay with our pups and hold them in the end so they know they are loved as they leave us. Since we lost them only a month apart it was especially hard on me to go through it twice in such a short time. That's why we waited until this year to start looking for a new dog to adopt.

The pandemic has made it extremely difficult to find puppies to adopt. All of the humane society shelters in our area never have any, or adopt them out the same day they take them in. We prefer Shetland Sheepdogs, as that's the breed we're most familiar with, but we also adopt rescue dogs. Frankly we would have taken any kind of puppy, but we refuse to buy them from stores as those folks use puppy mills. Most reputable breeders either have none available or are charging very high prices. Still, we kept looking and hoping.

By chance I found the name of a local Shetland Sheepdog breeder very close to us and contacted her earlier this year. She didn't have any puppies available, and was obviously reluctant to part with one of her older dogs. I gave her my name and asked her to let us know if the situation changed. I had my guy call last week to check with her, and it turned out that she had a new litter and three puppies still available for adoption. That's how we ended up with Beau and Shadow.