June 17th last year, my sweet and wonderful black lab/husky/shepherd named Layna passed away after 15 years of amazing companionship. She was my wife's first pet (they met first when Layna was 5 years old), and the two of them had a very deep bond.
It's been a long process, mourning Layna, and having a fluffy-shaped hole in our life.
But about 2 months ago we decided to open our hearts to the world and see who came across our path. Was there another dog out there, who we could love for themselves, and not try to make a "replacement" for our old girl?
Well. A friend of mine from the rugby community needs to re-home his 90-pound, 1-year old, 50/50 shepherd/husky, because his daughter has had to move back home, and is allergic to poor Moxie.
After a lot of emails and videos and photo exchanges, my wife and I are driving 5 hours to go "meet" Moxie tomorrow (Saturday). But we both know she is coming home with us.
This will be Moxie's first long car ride.
But she is coming home to three people who LOVE dogs. Have a big fenced yard. And two of us work from home. So Moxie will be getting a lot of attention and training, starting day 1.
I'm nervous as fuck. Layna was a super special class of animal, and I don't want to put my expectations too high on a 1 year old goofball.
But I also know that Layna's litter mates turned out to be aggressive, bad dogs.
So I like to think that nurture overrides nature, and Moxie will eventually be an amazing well-trained girl, too.
Here we go...!
So here are some photos of our Moxie: https://imgur.com/a/McRr33B (Sorry... can't figure out the secret incantation to get the images to show here, so there's just a link to the gallery.)