We had always talked about the possibility of getting another puppy, but we were not sure what the best timing for that would be, so we had decided that we would wait until Simon was old enough to require less constant supervision before we considered another puppy. With me working from home for the time being, it was an ideal time to raise another pup, but we had not made any decisions. That is, until we walked into our local petstore to buy food for Simon. The decision was made for us.
We were in the neighborhood of our local petstore on Thursday April 11, 2002. We had gotten Simon on February 19, 2002 so we had him about 2 months already and he was nearly 4 months old. We went in to buy food. The store actually has 2 front doors that you could choose to go through to get into the store. One on the far right and one on the left. My husband chose the far right door and proceeded into the store to get the food. I chose the left door and was greeted, immediately inside the door, by the cutest little face I had ever seen.
They had one of those wire dog runs set up and inside were 2 lab puppies and 1 puppy that I had never heard of. A Belgian Tervuren born on January 28, 2002. I spent a few moments petting the pup through the wire with the lab pups trying to steal my attention away from the other one. Every time the lab puppies came plowing over and pushing her out of the way, she went to the other end of the run and waited for me to come pet her. She repeated that 2 or 3 times before the saleswoman asked if I would like to hold her.
Right about this time, I saw my husband out of the corner of my eye and I said, "you have to come see this." He refused, knowing full well that I was over where they keep the puppies. I tried a few more times and finally he came over by me with the little Belgian girl in my arms. He melted immediately and started asking all about her to the saleswoman. The woman gave us some information about the breed and directed us to a book they had on the counter that was an encyclopedia of dog breeds. It contained a picture of a full grown Belgian Tervuren and we knew at that moment that we were hooked.
Now, we knew that the best way to buy a puppy was probably not through a pet store, so we asked to see the breeder information. We were presented with everything we asked for, and the saleswoman went on to suggest that we leave a fully refundable deposit for 24hrs. before making a rash decision. She told us to go home, research the breed and the breeder and make sure that the responsibility of this puppy is something we really want at this time. I think we both knew what our choice would be, but we took her advice and went home to do some research and to talk about it.
We returned to the pet store the next day and proceeded to adopt the puppy. Everything checked about her for us, and we knew we wanted her to be part of our lives, so we brought her home. The first time we realized that this puppy was going to be completely different from Simon, was in the car on the ride home. The second was when we introduced her to Simon. That first meeting was what caused me to coin the name "devil dog" to describe her. She wasn't taking no crap from no dog, no matter how big and loveable! We have had these differences reinforced every day since she's been with us.
It took a few days to decide, but we finally decided to name our little lady Roxie. And it just seems to fit. Simon and Roxie compliment each other well. They are both very intelligent. Simon in his eager to please way, and Roxie in her trying to get what she wants way. They are both very affectionate, Simon by putting his head in your lap, Roxie by running full speed into you and tackling you and licking your ear. They both love to play, Simon by fetching the tennis ball and Roxie by chasing and being chased. And they both give back ten-fold everything that we give to them.
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