Noelle's Arrival

As I stated in my "intro", Noelle was given as a gift to me on December 23, 1993. I was just about to walk out the door to go on a Christmas trip to Williamsburg, when my sister and dad walked in carrying the cutest, little black puppy I have ever seen. She was even wearing a little Santa hat on her head.

I had been wanting a black Lab for years. My family had two dogs during my childhood, Casper and Beau, both "miniature collies" but it had been about 8 years since we had a dog roaming the house. No, instead we had cats...9 (my fault) to be exact, but that is a story for another time. But I longed for a high energy dog to spend my time with. I just knew that a black Lab would be the perfect dog for me. A dog that not only had undying love & devotion, but a dog thats energy would make it seem like a "puppy for life."

I always imagined that my black Lab would be male, but when I saw my new female puppy, it was love at first sight. According to my family, Noelle was the runt of her litter...smaller than the rest. When they went to pick out a dog for me they were happily greeted by a small puppy trotting around proudly with a flip-flop in her mouth. My dog had been chosen.

In her first 3 minutes at her new home, Noelle looked for something to comfort her...unfortunately, no flip-flops were readily available, so she settled for carrying my sister's tennis shoe around in her mouth. It was the first of thousands of times that Noelle has made me laugh out loud at her antics. Minutes later, we let her out in the backyard and I got to see the difference between my previous dogs and a Labrador Retriever. Miss Noelle left the deck and promptly glued her nose to the ground, seemingly sniffing every square inch of grass in our yard. Her nose did not lift off the ground until she reached the back corner of the yard. When she finally did lift her head she had something in her mouth...but it wasn't a tennis shoe. It was a bird! No doubt, a bird killed by a member of our cat army. But my brand new puppy had found it & boy was I proud!

I wish I had pictures to post of Noelle as a puppy, but I didn't have a digital camera back then. But never fear, I will be scanning photos in & you will get to see the cutest puppy in all the land.