His timing is perfect. Since we moved to Missouri just a few months ago, my heart yearned for a puppy. When we went into the mission field, we walked away from our Brittany Spaniels back in 2016. It was probably the hardest thing we had to do. I never was a dog person, until I got married to Timothy, who had the sweetest dog at the time. I fell in love, and God also healed me of my dander allergy. When we were getting serious about marriage, we ended up getting a female puppy, where Timothy already had his male. We got married, and now we have his old dog, and our new pup, Jasmine. We were both working at the time, and Jasmine went into heat. We made sure they were both in kennels behind locked doors. Lo and behold, his male somehow got through kennels and doors so when I got home from work, they were together all day. The vet said they are sure shes pregnant. Welcome to the first few months of our marriage with 6 dogs! Month two, we had 4 pups. We kept one, because we knew Timothy’s male wasn’t going to make it longer, gave one to Timothys mom and sold the other two to local brothers. In the time we had to the two dogs, about a decade, I fell in love with them.
We spent some time from 2016-2019 traveling in missions abroad. The Lord called us back to the states and we moved to Florida after the passing of Timothys dad and being in charge of the estate and selling his homes, etc. While we were living there, I thought about a dog from time to time, but probably since having two young children in the past few years, it wasn’t on my radar too much. We also knew we were in a temporary living situation and were doing many road trips to look for a home. Finally, towards the end of our stay in Florida, we felt a pull to move to southwest Missouri.
One of our favorite things to do when we first moved here was going to Bass Pro Shops in Springfield, which happens to be the biggest store in the country. We happened to run into the cutest Brittany puppy, in a shopping cart. Immediately, something just came over me, and felt a pull to start praying into getting a puppy. I mentioned it to Timothy, and he sort of just laughed it off. In most of our conversations, it has been, well if God calls us into the mission field abroad, we can’t commit to a dog. It was still heavy on my heart, and the Lord knew that. I needed to check my phone for something a day after that while driving, and I happen to see a Brittany pop his head through the window at a Starbucks. Hmmmm, thats odd? This breed is not very common. The following day, I went to get a carpet that I found on facebook marketplace, and guess what kind of dog was sitting on the driveway? A Brittany! Three in a row! And the story still isn’t over! Timothy took Elijah hunting to some remote place in the middle of no where, and happened to run into another hunter, who happened to have his Brittany with him! I think God was saying yes, but we still were hesitant!
We went on a road trip to the carolina’s on the east coast to visit family and friends. On the way back to Missouri, we stopped at a breeders home to look at some of her puppies. She had some that were ready to go, but we were a little uneasy about it and continued our journey west. About an hour after we left her place, I was on the phone with another breeder who had the color pup I liked, liver and white. We stopped at a gas station wondering if we should go back, but we decided to just keep going instead. Timothy had really grown fond of a more rare color hard to find in Brittanys, a tri-color, who have liver, white and orange. He also wanted a Brittany with strong hunting bloodlines where the parents or grandparents were field champions. This breeder told me that if we wanted a solid hunting dog, to go with a place called Carters in southern Georgia. The pup was the grandson of a legendary dog named Peter Gunn and you can read more about him here: https://www.carterbrittanykennels.com/ngdc-nagdc-fc-afc-peter-gunn
I went on their website, and it they had a tri-color Brittany with amazing bloodlines, exactly 8 weeks old, ready to be picked up! We had to put a deposit down to hold the dog. Reality clicked in and I had to call the property management company to see if it was ok to have a puppy. They took a few days to get back to me, but the owner complied, where usually they don’t allow puppies because they tend to destroy everything! We then had to make the decision of, do we drive back east (14 hours) where we literally just came from, or have the puppy flown to us? We didn’t like the idea of putting a little puppy on a plane, so we literally hit the road again to southern Georgia to get our pup!
Stopping to smell the birds here at Bass Pro in Memphis, TN
Cuddling with Timothy, as Jonali is a little jealous 😉
Puppy Love
We picked up our new bird dog, Blaze, and headed back to Missouri. Everything was smooth sailing on the way back home. It was a few nights of howling as he was not used to the crate, and waking Shiloh up, and then Shiloh would cry, and he would howl, but after a week, he was used to it and now is used to the kennel! He has been chewing anything (but his toys) he can get his mouth on, puppy nipping and still going to the bathroom in the house, but we have been enjoying him a lot, and the bigger kids are helping a ton! It feels amazing again to have a Brittany and have the kids enjoy him too! We hold him loose, as if God does one day ask us to go abroad, we will re-home him, but for now, we are loving our new Blazey baby!