A baby brother for Jeep & Seven!

So because Jeep & Seven are now 3 1/2 years old, we felt it was time to add another pup to the Keith family! Not only because we've heard it will keep Jeep & Seven active longer, but also because if (God-forbid) something were to happen to either of them, having a third pup around would help ease the transition and grieving for all of us.  Plus, we've just always known at some point that we were going to add a chocolate lab to the fam, so now is as good as time as any! 

I figure since I'm already cleaning up loads of dog hair - why not a little more?  I just hope Banks doesn't decide to freak out or run away from all this puppy love in our home.  Poor Banks. 

Us girls are so outnumbered.

We contacted the breeder we used for Jeep & Seven a few weeks ago, and it turns out that they were expecting a litter of chocolates this month!  

The sire's (dad) name is Jackson and the dame's (mom) name is Missy. 

                 (Jackson)                                                             (Missy - VERY pregnant)

Turns out - Jackson IS JEEP & SEVEN'S FATHER!  We always knew that Jeep & Seven's dad's name was Stonewall.  But what we didn't realize was that Stonewall's full name is Stonewall Jackson and his son's name is Stonewall Jackson Jr. (Jackson).  Thus - Stonewall was their grandfather and Jackson is their dad!  So this little guy we'll be adding to our family, is TRULY going to be a half-brother to them!  This is actually very cool, because the breeders have several dames and sires they breed, so really it was a huge surprise & blessing that we get to keep our pups all in the same family! :-)

CJ was born last Wednesday, August 22nd to a litter of 8 pups; 3 chocolate males, 1 chocolate female, 1 yellow male, and 3 black females.

A tri-liter is actually very rare, so it's kinda cool that when we go to see the litter we can see all of them together.

The breeder sent me this pic of one of the chocolate males just under 24 hours old - this could be our CJ!

Eeek!! I want to smush on him! He's sooo tiny and can't even open his eyes yet!

After talking with Jason this weekend, I would absolutely love to breed Labs if we can find us a house on some serious acreage and it would allow me to be able to work from home! I just love my boys to pieces and know that they bring so much hope and healing to the kids in our neighborhood.  It would be cool to have some of the inner city kids come to our house and spend time with the dogs, learning how to care for them, train them ect.  I know our boys have been a HUGE part of the healing process for the kids in our neighborhood, so it would be awesome to offer something like that for them.  I mean seriously, if we can get a house on like 30 acres with a creek or stream and then build a bunkhouse, we could do some weekend retreats for these boys & girls.  I'm totally dreaming right now, but I can just picture it ;-)

Stay tuned - in mid-September we pick out our CJ and I'll post pics & video of our visit to Confederate Lab Kennels in Chicamauga, Georgia!