On July 20, 2011 we adopted a Labradoodle...named Prince.

He was 7 months old

brown & black (not sure of his true color yet)

60 pounds---so far

all puppy---chewy/bouncy/easily distracted but OH SO SWEET!

He was rescued by Florida Poodle Rescue---(FPR) here in FL from a high kill shelter in GA where somehow he ended up dumped there at about 4-5 months old by a family because they didn't want him /were moving----FPR tried for 2 months to get him released from GA through contacts they had there but because of other dogs coming in and some being sick they wouldn't let him go until they finally got him and 9 other dogs quarantined before they could take them.

As of 2 weeks ago they got the 10 dogs in their SUV and headed back to FL. He'd been living quite nicely for the previous 2 weeks at a big home with a fenced in yard in St Petersburg near the beach. This is where he has been learning some social skills .......right now he just doesn't know things--he has a baby brain in a 7 month old body--but he is so eager to learn. He's sure Zoe...our daughter Mandy's gray cat who is retired at our house...is a squirrel; she however has begun training him to understand that she is the boss!

The 1st week we spent a lot of time trying to coax him into the pool which he was so curious about, but he chose only to stay on the 1st step. By the end of the afternoon he was bouncing in onto the top step eagerly and occasionally missing a step and taking the plunge, but was right back playing again in no time.

We can see he has a lot of fears to unlearn but is even in the first week here trusting us more than we expected.

His name was Prince.  As our daughter Erin said "we are not quite the 'Prince' kind of people" so we switched it to Quince and soon will add "y" to it and make it Quincey. Even now he is responding to it with no problem. We were told that it would be easiest to choose a similar sounding name so as to make it easy for him to transition.

With our new addition we have filled some of the big hole that has been left over the past 1 1/2 years from losing Cody (our 14 year old yellow Lab--1 1/2 years ago), then Packer (our daughter's family's Labrador--8 months ago), and 2 months ago Aspen (our black Lab--14 years old). We see so much of all three in Quincey and we are sure they had a hand in choosing him for us to find and they are smiling down as he makes us smile with their old antics.

We chuckle when we think about how we were going to just "start looking and take our time finding a rescue dog"; we also had a firm plan to get an adult, smaller size dog (maybe 30-40 pounds) and light in color because all of our floors are a creme color (bleached pine Pergo) and we also wanted one that wouldn't shed much and if it sheds some it won't show as much by being light in color; we even thought about a female for a change. So here we are with a YOUNG dog that will be fairly BIG, is DARK brownish black and only time will tell if he is a mix of Poodle and Lab that won't shed much! But we love him so that we don't really care! That seems to happen to us a lot over the years---we go for one thing and come home with the opposite, but we've always found the perfect dogs for us; actually they picked us each time.

Quincey really is exactly what we need---he loves to be near and is so loving; we are working on him not trying so much to sit on our laps!---he also has the dark brown Lab eyes that all of our dogs have had....when he looks at us we see them in his eyes and find it so comforting to still have some of our Labs beautiful eyes in him; yet the newness of a different breed makes him unique for us and a totally new adventure.

Right now he's laying on his bed beside me chewing on a toy just like he's always lived here....it's awesome!

Life is good!