Carl gets his dog

(Here Carl and Foxy are playing soccer. She can actually dribble the ball with those short legs.)

After a few years of saving, Carl finally got the Welsh Corgi he always wanted. She's 6 years old and probably one of the best behaved dogs in the world. She doesn't bark (unless Grant is sitting on her head), chew underwear, poop in other people's yards, etc. We love Foxy.

We've been saving for a dog since our MA days. There, the price of a Corgi was $1100. We didn't pay that much for Foxy.

If you're considering buying a dog, here are a few tips:

1) get rid of your underwear eating, whiny, bark when trucks go by dog. Hopefully you'll be able to find an unsuspecting relative to give him to.

2) research and pick a good breed of dog. Its true the small dogs are pretty yippy, want to play all the time and commonly follow you around the house always two inches or less away from your heals. If you want to hold a dog all day, a small dog would be a good kind to get. On the other hand, Corgi's are commonly mature, calm, want to be in charge (at least of other dogs) and smart, a better match for our family, especially if they can outsmart Grant, the great annoyer of dogs.

3) buy an older dog--much less work

4) Change her name. It only takes a few days for the dog to catch on. Foxy came with the name Keyna, which is Welsh for jewel. I told the kids we'd need to come up with something else. "Why not jewel?" they asked. "Are you kidding me?" is all I could respond. Anyway, since nobody would agree to Wonder Woman or Goldilocks we agreed to Foxy, after one of Carl's Corgi's from his farming days. Foxy the first was Carl's best friend. So it fits. We love her.