Lucky

Life here in the Vargas home continues to keep us on our toes, busier than ever and full of happiness & love! 
A couple of weeks ago we adopted "Lucky" - a beautiful, purebred Golden Retriever - from our neighbor Claudia.  Claudia is a well known, respected, reputable Golden Retriever breeder here in Riverside.  If you ever see someone walking a Golden around here, you can pretty much be guaranteed that the pup came from Claudia.. and if you're "Lucky" enough to own one of her dogs, you'll see exactly why she's so respected & reputable here in our community.  She takes better care of her dogs/puppies than some people take care of their children!  So how did Lucky come to be part of our family?
She was born a healthy, gorgeous pup 3 years ago (her father - Nitro - lives two houses away from us).  She had a litter of equally gorgeous, healthy pups and then began to develop some unforeseen medical issues.  An auto-immune deficiency, a thyroid issue and surgery for lock-jaw (a common problem with Retrievers & Labs) forced Lucky into an early retirement.  With her sweet, gentle disposition and fun, loving personality Claudia knew that she deserved more of a life than being confined to a kennel so she sent me an e-mail - and the rest is history! 
Lucky never went through any kind of an adjustment period; she walked through our front door, plopped down on her new bed and proceeded to act like she's lived here all of her life!  She is *amazing* with the kids - playful, but gentle.  Patient and tolerant.  She will play fetch for hours and loves to go on long walks.  She's super good in the car, too!!  She's very obedient - she comes when she's called, stays off of the furniture, doesn't jump etc.  She's about as low maintenance as one can expect a dog to be!  She fits right into our family perfectly!
I'm so in love with her, too.  We go for a walk, just the two of us, every morning.  In order to do this I need to be up, dressed and ready to go out the door by 7A.  It's not easy, but I do it because I enjoy the quiet time it allows me as we stroll around the neighborhood by ourselves.  The kids join us on our early evening walk, which can be challenging at times only because Savannah truly doesn't like going for walks, haha!  I usually try to sweeten the deal by walking them to the local park at the elementary school.  It tends to work until it's time for us to head home....haha!
All in all though I'm very happy with our decision to adopt Lucky and I'm looking forward to having her be a part of our family for many, many years to come!