Ryder, Day 1

Day 1 - Sunday March 19.
From 2pm until bedtime at 10pm, Sunday was all about excitement. The girls were excited. And Ryder was (sometimes literally) bouncing off the walls. I don't think he sat or lay down at all until about 9:30.

Sunday, 1:15pm, waiting...

We walked him 8 or 9 times to try to take the edge off of his boundless energy and enthusiasm, and in the hopes that we could settle him down a little bit. But no amount of walking (and trotting) made him less of a perpetual motion machine. And walks were an experience in and of themselves; an experience that could best be described as water-skiing behind a remarkably strong dog for its size. Grace couldn't handle him. Julia didn't even try. It was all that Amp and I could do to keep him in check. Which was concerning, as we had wanted a modest sized dog of modest energy level. We weren't seeing modest energy level. To say the least. But we understood that this was a day of entirely new experiences for him, and he was likely to be abnormally wound up.

Sunday, 1:30pm, meeting Ryder, poop and all

Which isn't to say that we weren't seeing some really good qualities in him as well. He was gorgeous; a classic beagle with many of the signature hound characteristics. His walks were almost entirely head down, nose to the ground, snuffling along the trail of every scent imaginable. He didn't bite. He didn't chew anything he wasn't supposed to. He was housebroken. He ate readily. He would sometimes sit on command. He was good with the kids. But he did show the tendency to try to climb people, tables, shelves, kitchen islands, and anything else he could reach standing on his back legs. And we couldn't eat dinner without putting him in his crate.

So there were many concerns as day 1 of our 7 day trial wound down. At around 8:30 or 9pm, Grace cried a little bit, saying that she was afraid we wouldn't be able to keep him. Amp and I were afraid that might prove to be true as well. But it was only day 1, a high stress day, and we would have to see what the future would bring. We told Grace to be patient, and we still had time...

New strange places

And then at around 9:30 in the evening, as we were mulling over the day's events and starting to think about moving toward bed, we all sat down in the family room, exhausted. And Ryder trotted into the room, looked around, climbed up on the love seat between Amp and Grace, and flopped down, his head on Amp's lap. He sighed loudly, closed his eyes, and started to doze off. It was nice moment. We were tired, and finally, apparently, so was he.

After spending a little while petting him, we took him to his crate. He went in easily, laid down and curled up. We all went up to bed, and didn't hear more than a solitary whimper or two. He slept without a peep from 10pm to 6am the next morning...