The Sun has Both Eyes Open: We Love you Hannah

I'm a little late getting this posted. We gave Hannah to a nice couple here in town at the beginning of January and I just want to show a few pictures of her during the time she was with us.

January 26, 2008 -

We got this beautiful, 8 month old, chocolate lab from a family farm west of Springfield. Her name was Miss Ellie. The gentleman who owned her was going to be traveling more for his job and just wasn't going to have the time to show her the attention she needed. We had the perfect situation to take her in and show her the attention she needed. We lived out in the country and Carter and I were home all the time. We all loved her from the moment we saw her.

We decided to change her name to Hannah. We really liked the name Ella and if we were to have a little girl and name her Ella that might be a little confusing. So we started with Miss Hannah and it didn't take long before she recognized her new name, Hannah.

We got her up to date on all of her shots, had a chip put in her and the little snip snip to make sure we weren't going to have more then one puppy running around.

November 1, 2008 -

We moved to our current house, in town. It was a big change for everyone. Hannah no longer had acres to run on or other dogs to go visit. She was now fenced into a "small" back yard in town. For almost a year she did really good at not even trying to get out of the chain link fence that kept her in the back yard. And then toward the end of the Summer 2009 she saw a squirrel run under the fence and she figured out that she could do the same. It was all down hill from there. She could no longer be in the back yard without being on her chain. Even when we were out there she got under the fence and would run away before we knew it.

July 20, 2010 -

Hannah went for a spa day and became an indoor dog.

She was such a good girl in the house. She never chewed on anything and she loved being around the boys. She would lay beside Carter's bed when we read books at night. But we did have our share of problems from bringing her in the house. For instance, the kennel that we bought for her to stay in was ruined in no time. We left her in it while we were gone and there was a thunderstorm. She started pushing with her nose and broke the metal wires on the door. It was only a few weeks later and she figured out how to get the whole front section off of the kennel, not just the door! If she ate crumbs off of the dining room floor after the boys got done eating then she would get sick. Usually on my carpet, of course.

Between taking Carter to school, bible study, UMW, going to the gym and other weekly things going on, it just seemed like we never had time for Hannah during the day. We were in and out often but would leave her downstairs because I knew we would be out the door again soon. I felt bad that she didn't get the attention that she deserved. Knowing that we had a third child on the way we began to consider the possibility of giving her away. I talked about it jokingly to friends and family. Then a friend said that she had talked to one of her friends of that might consider taking Hannah. When it came time to think about it more seriously it seemed to be very hard for me. I cried many times over it. If you remember this post... Never... this is not the reaction I expected from myself. But we knew it would be best for her. After meeting the couple she would be going to live with, we knew we were doing the right thing. It still didn't make it much easier. I still had a hard time watching her go out the front door. (Even though before there were days I threatened that I would open the door and ask her to go out.)