It's a Colorful Life: Miss Jasmine

One of the biggest part of our lives at the good old Glynn residence is our year and a half old German Shepherd, Jasmine. And let me tell you, what a year and a half it has been. I’ll start with the beginning to explain how we came to find this amazing, silver and white gal.

In late 2011- early 2012ish, Billy and I both said goodbye to our childhood dogs, Mac and Oscar. Anyone who has a lost a dog knows how difficult it really is. It is like losing a family member. Without harping on the sadness, I’ll just say we were both going through a tough time after losing our pups.

We got through only about two months without a dog before we both started to really miss the companionship, so we started casually looking. With our wedding only seven months away, Billy starting a new job and talks of buying a home stirring, we really weren’t sure it was the right time to take on a puppy, but we were also really missing having a dog around. So we went against our better judgment and kept researching. We knew we wanted a Shepherd, as both Mac and Oscar were Shepherds and they were such great dogs.

After about a month or so of digging around on the Internet, we finally found this gorgeous girl for sale from a nice farmer in Pennsylvania. We made plans to meet in the middle of our locations and pick her up in Connecticut and before we knew it, she was home with us in Kingston.

The first few months were challenging, to say the least. We had absolutely no idea what we were in for. My Dad warned us over and over again how difficult puppies are, but we ignored, like all parents do (and by parents, I mean dog owners), thinking that we would have it under control. Wrong!

Sleepless nights and long days of chasing around an energetic young pup certainly took their toll. I have not had an actual child, but it must be similar to having a newborn baby. Either way, it was tough.

So fast-forwarding through the end of 2012 to now, we continued on with life by getting married and buying a new home, and the transitions were definitely confusing for Jasmine. A year or so later, there we were with a very large dog and not a lot of control over her. She was basically running our home and we were following her lead. Not a good way to raise an over sized pup.

Knowing we needed to gain some control, we recently sought out and found a pretty talented dog trainer that requires his customer to leave their dog with him for 1-3 weeks, depending on how serious the dog issues are. He recommended we do the two week program (not so bad right?), so after a long story, that is where our girl has been for the last 13 days. We pick her up tomorrow and I can’t wait to see her progress.

So the moral to my story is that I have absolutely no regrets about getting her at such a chaotic time in our lives. It has been worth it. We, without a doubt, learned our lesson that you’ve got to establish dominance over dogs at a very young age or you might never. But at the same time, she, like Mac and Oscar, is a member of our family and brings so much joy and fun to our lives, that I just couldn’t image it without her, challenges or not.

Here is a serious photo dump of our year with her. It was too difficult to pick only a few to share. She's just too damn cute.

This is the picture of her on the website where she was listed for sale..