A new dog--Holland

Actually, the new dog is now known as Holly. As you might expect with a Spicer dog, there's a story involved.

It all started with my sister's Pomeranian, Lulu, which is the cutest little puffball of a dog I've ever seen. So, my husband told me I could get a Pom for my birthday which was last week. I started researching and found a Pom rescue group in our area. They had so many cute Poms available, but their requirements for 'adoptive' families were extreme, in my opinion. They demanded locked gates, dog doors, and pre-/post-adoption visits. Nowhere, however, did they explain how they were trained to make an appropriate determination of fitness to have a dog.

So, I next thought about looking for a wire-haired fox terrier because our first dog was one and she was so sweet. The Fort Worth Animal Control had three listed on their website so off we went to look at them. Well, one was gone, one had heartworms, and the last was a mix and it was huge and wild. We went back to look at the small dogs and were all smitten with a 3 month old Jack Russell terrier/Australian cattle dog mix.

She was named Holland. My friends from the DownSyndome community probably suspect it was in honor of the Emily Perl Kingsley essay "Welcome to Holland." Nope. She is named for Derek Holland, pitching wunderkind of the Texas Rangers. Our other dog is named Michael, for Michael Young, the third baseman of the TR and my son's fave player. I jokingly suggested naming our new dog Holland and calling her Holly, then my mind drifted to having dogs named Michael and Holly. As any self-respecting viewer of The Office knows, Michael Scott's girlfriend from last season was Holly in HR. So, with the goofiest of intent, it fits.


We expect her to be about 25-30 lbs, about the size of our other dog who is seriously overweight and is also a terrier mix. She is currently recovering from being spayed and from kennel cough, but is otherwise quite sweet and cute like only a puppy can be.

The funniest part of our story is that John was somewhat dismayed that he offered to give me a purebred dog for my birthday but I got a mutt instead. All I can say is 'typical Jill.'

Oops...this picture should have gone with Ella's birthday, but here it is....