Meet Sadie!!!!

I am so excited to introduce you to our new puppy, SADIE! She's the newest addition to our family of 5, making her family member #6 AND how paw-fect that, as I post this, I have realized this post is the 1500th post at bollingwith5. It's a double celebration!!!! I plan to go into details about how, what, why, when, and WHERE we got her, in the next post, but I want this post to just be about HER!!!!

What kind of puppy is Sadie?  

Our girl is a Rhodesian Ridgeback.  The Rhodesian Ridgeback's primary and distinguished feature, that they are known for, is their ridge.  The ridge is a line of hair, along it's back, that grows in the opposite direction, from the rest of its coat.  The breed is also known for their loyalty, athletic ability, muscularity, intelligence, cleanliness (they do not shed and are practically odor free) and definitely it's LOOKS.  They are GORGEOUS. It's been said that they can be stubborn, but then I've heard that it is no different than most dogs or some kids. You can raise two of the same, in the same house, one could be stubborn and one may not be.  And originally, the breed known for their lion hunting ability.  Apparently, if they spot an animal, such as a rabbit or squirrel, they will run/hunt until they catch it. Considering where we live, deer, fox, wolves, bears etc... we WILL need a fence for the protection of our sweet pup. 

The Rhodesian Ridgebacks come in two different coat colors: red wheaten and light wheaten. Sadie's color is a red wheaten. That's the only coat we liked.  There are also two varieties of nose colors: liver nosed (brown) or black nosed. Darren and I did not like the look of the liver nosed Ridgeback. It makes the breed look more like a pitbull or mutt.  We LOVED the look of the black nose/mussle. So...Sadie's nose is black.

  

Before presenting Sadie to the kids, we introduced her to our home (just Darren and I).  We greeted her with some celebratory PINK balloons and a fashionable collar.  It won't be her first fashion statement, if I can help it; :) although, Darren is refusing to let me dress her and DIVA her up! 

While on our way to pick our sweet puppy up, I asked my "Sensational 6" if they had any suggestions for dog names. Only two suggestions were given: Sadie and Ginger.  Darren immediately fell in love with the name Sadie, but we had a few other "loves": Allie, Lola, Lexi, and Charlie. My girlfriend, Lisa Fernandez, was the one who suggested the name Sadie. We decided to share the narrowed down names with our kiddies and let them have the final say!

Upon arriving home, Sadie was busy exploring her home, but I think she was wondering, "Do I have any brothers or sisters?!?!?!" LOL!

Sadie is already allowing me to torture her with "Mr. Cannon", my camera.

Sadie is 11 weeks old and we think 25 pounds. According to all of the research we have done, our girl should be between 70-85 pounds when she is full grown. Her final weight is part of the reason we chose to get a female over a male. Males are supposed to get between 100-110 pounds.  However, for some reason, our breeder seems to think Sadie will be close to 100 pounds.  

Our breeder said Sadie was the "pick of the liter" and chose to keep her for herself. In addition to breeding Ridgebacks, she also breeds Brittneys and Silver Labs. Our breeder has a very successful job, outside of raising puppies, and travels a lot. After we called her to inquire about her Ridgeback puppies, we learned that she only had two male puppies left.  We wanted a female puppy, so she offered Sadie to us.  She said, "I realize that keeping her would be unfair to her because I travel so much." We are thankful she was willing to let her go because she already holds a special place in our heart!!!

You will obviously get to hear all about how adding a puppy to our lives came about and also how we presented her to our children and what their reaction was. I will post on that soon.  For now, enjoy this post. Isn't she A-DOG-ABLE?

And finally, here is a photo of a full grown Rhodesian Ridgeback.  We hope she will end up looking something like this... if not cuter!