Skip and I had talked about getting a dog as soon as we started living in our house on 64th Street (we never would have been able to swing it in the shoe-box apartment). So we started watching Craigslist and the Humane Society until we found a puppy that would suit us. Skip emailed a picture one day to me of an adorable little puppy from an ad on Craigslist, with the tagline "6-week old Vizsla," so I started doing some research. I come to find out that Vizlsas are very energetic, demonstrably loving, clean, somewhat neurotic dogs. Sounded good to me! However, I also found that they have been really responsibly bred in the U.S., so I was a little concerned as to why some guy had only 1 puppy, and why he was looking to get rid of it at 6-weeks old. So Skip inquired. It turns out that this guy on the south side of Milwaukee had a 6-year-old male Vizsla who sired a litter of puppies. The guy kept one of the puppies (a female), and... well, before he could get her spayed, she got "knocked up" by Daddy. So, the guy knew that the puppies would be one-generation inbred (not necessarily a bad thing in doggie breeding), but that most people wouldn't want a show-Vizlsa that they would register with that breeding, so he didn't broadcast the story on Craigslist. There was a whole litter of puppies, and all he wanted was to find loving homes for all of them. Oh, and he wasn't going to let them go until 8-weeks. So we went down there to check the litter out.
Oh. My. God. The puppies were seriously the cutest things I'd ever seen, having been born on 7/7/07. Vizsla puppies are totally wrinkly and squishy, so we basically fell in love right away. We knew we didn't want the biggest one of the litter (Scotch's dad was over 70 lbs, which is giant for a Vizsla, and makes for a very tall, crazy dog). We were playing with one particular puppy, and I just knew, watching Skip with him, that he was our dog. He was called "Padfoot" by the guy's kids, since he had white on all of his toes. Padfoot was ours! We left that day and went to dinner to celebrate.
We picked the name "Scotch" since that's the exact color he is, not to mention we thought dogs with liquor names are always fun :). We visited him a few times before we could pick him up, and a couple weeks later, Skip headed down there to get him. I stayed home, and in walks Skip with the most adorable little thing ever. He set him down in the middle of the house to start getting acquainted with the place, and he didn't move for like 10 minutes, 
and just sat there and cried. We walked him around the neighborhood, then took him down to a calm spot in the river, where he went right in-- and layed in the mud. So he got a bath his first day home-- how traumatic! Over the next few weeks we attempted to have him sleep in his kennel... yeah. That didn't last long. The guy has slept in bed with us since he was about 3 months old. We (and apparently most other Vizsla owners) are huge suckers.
Then, one day, Skip called me at work in a panic: "I lost Scotch," he says. What?! How do you lose a nine-week old puppy? Apparently Skip had been walking in the nearby woods with him, and he stopped to talk to a guy on a bike. Afterwards, the guy rode away, and Skip started walking the other direction. He turned around, and Scotch was gone. With Scotch's coloring and it being September, it was impossible to see such a tiny thing intermingled in the groundcover. So I left work, and went over to help look for him. My parents and Sarah and Elizabeth even came over, and we searched for HOURS for him. It was miserable, since it was horribly humid and the mosquitoes in the woods were horrendous. We called and gave a report to the 'Tosa police as well as Animal Control. After hours of searching and crying, we so sadly assumed he had either fallen in the river or gotten hit by a train (since those are the borders of the woods). We finally came home, only to collapse into each other in just a total fog of tears and mosquito bites.The next day, I was sitting at work making a "Lost Puppy" sign, when Skip called me and said he thought someone had found him. He gave me an address, and I ran out of work and went there. In the front yard of this lovely house was an older couple and Scotch was on the guy's lap!! I was beside myself. Apparently the lady had been out for her morning walk in the woods and here comes this little puppy bounding down the path. She thought it was so weird that no one was with him, so she called Animal Control and got our information from there. They were the sweetest people-- I sent them a plant the next day. We were SO happy to have Scotch back, and from that point on, he has been beyond spoiled. :)
when he was about 5-7 months old, and I swear I would go to work every day with scratches and bruises on my arms from trying to handle him in the evenings. Then... we discovered the dog park... i.e. LIFE SAVER. Had we realized 
that he needed at least an hour of exercise every day to be sane, we would have discovered it sooner (Actually, we knew it was there, since that was the area he got lost in. I remember being very jealous of all those people enjoying their dogs, while I was searching for mine :(...). Ever since then, we try (I swear) to get him out as often as we can so that he can work off that seemingly endless energy he has.
Scotch has been wonderful with Preston, even though he's so big and crazy. He loves Preston and it's been
funny watching the two of them become buddies over the past year. This "war" that he and I have been having has coincided with the odd schedule that we hold, which means we don't get him out as much as he desperately needs it. We try, but it's just not possible. When the summer comes around and we get out yard fixed, we will have tons of opportunities to get him out and calm some of the craziness.
(And, because formatting on this stupid blog is being difficult, here are more pictures just in random order:)
See, I told you, I love my dog. He's just neurotic, but aren't we all? :)
Yes, yes we are. =) -kjgray
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