New puppy! Welcome, Elanor!

After much debate and consideration, Joey and I decided on which dog we wanted to adopt.  I went and got supplies for a new dog: bed, crate, food, food bowls, toys, leash, etc.  Last Friday Joey and I went to pick up our new puppy.

She is a yellow lab.  She is just about one week shy of one year old.  Here are some more stats for those of you who like to know the size of things: she is fifty-five inches long from the tip of her nose to the end of her tail, her tail is sixteen inches long, and she is twenty-one inches tall at the shoulder.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we adopted her through the Heart of Texas Lab Rescue.

We decided to name her Elanor. I am sure most people reading this post are aware that we are huge Tolkien fans. She is named for little, yellow, star-shaped flowers called elanor; a little yellow dog, named for little yellow flowers.

The name comes from The Fellowship of the Ring; in the second book, The Ring Goes South, sixth chapter, Lothlorien, in which there is a description the fellowship’s first glimpse of Lothlorien:

At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks were other flowers, white and palest green: they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass.  Over all the sky was blue, and the sun of the afternoon glowed upon the hill and cast long green shadows beneath the trees.

‘Behold! You are come to Cerin Amroth,’ said Haldir. … Here ever bloom the winter flowers in the unfading grass: the yellow elanor…

This past week we have been getting her settled into our routine. She slipped into our family quite smoothly. Katy has been a little jealous, but they are getting used to each other and figuring out how to live together and play together.  Elanor is very mellow, and she likes to lay down next to me while I am working.  She is quite fond of chewing, but seems to be happy chewing on the toys we have given her.  I have not lost any shoes yet!  Rachel and Debra were good enough to give us a couple of hard rubber toys that their dogs no longer play with, and those have been a big hit.

We have  been playing fetch with a bouncy red ball in the backyard.  Elanor is great at catching the ball, and even bringing it back.  We are working on letting go of the ball so a person can pick it up to throw again.  We have taken several walks around the neighborhood, and Elanor does well with her leash and harness.