Meet Lexi!

We're in Georgia now. We've been here for a day and a half and have already accumulated a new member of the family.

Isn't she cute?

Because mini australian shepherds are relatively rare, there are only three breeders in Georgia. One was three and a half hours away, one was two hours and fifteen minutes away, and one was an hour and a half away. We are learning that everything in Georgia is extremely spread out. It is nothing like Utah.

Anyway, all three breeders currently had puppies, but we were only interested in the two hour away litter, in Gray, Georgia. Because the minis are so popular, we had to act fast, and so yesterday we took off to explore Georgia and to get our little puppy.

Everything is so green here! It's kind of crazy.

When we got to Gray, we took a picture of this water tower just for my dad (his name is Gray):

They had the most awesome road name there. I'd never seen anything with an "-N-" in it before. Awesome.

When we finally (finally!) got there, we looked at all the puppies for about an hour. It was nice because the puppies were raised on a horse ranch, so they have already been exposed to horses. All the puppies were extremely cute, but one stood out as the smartest and prettiest. That's the one we picked out.

We had been thinking of names all week, and we were mostly considering Dani, Tempi, and Remy, but none of those seemed to really fit her, but I had thought of Lexi the day before, and it fits her perfectly.

When we got in the car, she cried for ten minutes because she has never been away from her family or home before. Then she was really good. About an hour into the drive she fell asleep for the rest of the time.

I think she was exhausted and a little traumatized.

We are staying at a hotel that allows pets because we couldn't get into our apartment on Friday. My plane got uber delayed and we got into Albany at 10:00 pm instead of 11:00 am. So we can't get the water and stuff turned on till tomorrow.

Anyway, Lexi had never been in a crate before and she hated it at first. So we played with her for a long time to wear her out until she kept plopping down on the floor.

Finally she was tired enough to go to bed in her crate. She woke up every couple of hours crying (like I said, she hasn't been away from her family at all yet, so I'm sure this was very scary to her). I picked up a pillow and blanket and slept next to her crate and petted her through the bars until she fell asleep. It was a long night.

But I think she did really well for her first night. She didn't go to the bathroom in her crate, and since we take her out right after she comes out of her crate, she just goes to the bathroom outside. So far it's going really well.

We took her on a walk this morning and she thought it was really fun to hide in these plants.

Jordan is a really good puppy daddy. He really seems to like Lexi. He's going to Texas for two weeks starting tomorrow, and I am so sad. He might not even come home this weekend! I might cry if that happens. Hopefully Lexi is a little better behaved when he gets back, though, as far as crate and house training goes. We will miss you, Jordan!