“Hey let’s go look at the puppies!”

These were famous last words.

Many of you who know me personally have known that for about 9 months I’ve been OCD to get a dog. I was bound and determined to buy a purebred boxer from a breeder. I had even picked out the breeder from here in CO to make sure they came from a line of boxers that is cold tolerant (er). I didn’t have a name picked out, but I had the general idea – female, brindle, medium to large.

Then we went to lunch with my sister-in-law, and the restaurant was right next to a PetSmart that was doing an adoption event. There were lots of dogs, but the one that stuck out to us the most was a cool looking six month old puppy named Drake. At first I didn’t think that I dug him too much because he was sitting in the lap of a gal helping out with the adoption rescue. Turns out I was just creeped out by the human, not the dog.

It seems that there were a couple of dogs from the Bahamas there, called “Potcakes”. Potcakes are indiginous street / pack dogs that roam around the Bahamian Islands of Caicos chain, Turk chain, and Bahamian chain. They are incredibly hardy dogs as they have been basically interbred super mutts for the last 200 years. The story goes that South American settlers brought dogs with them to the Islands of the Bahamas several hundred or thousand years ago. These dogs went to form the sustaining base of what became the mogrel / potcake “base” dog if you will. During the revolutionary war in America, the loyalists got expelled and took their Danes, South Carolina Dogs, Labs, Shepherds and other hardy dogs that would survive the trip and left. Most moved back to England or fled to Canada, but some went to the Bahamian Islands.

Fast forward some 230 years and the Bahamas now have a problem: There are a TON of dogs roaming the streets and not enough people to offset the dogs’ food needs. So they are begining to spay and neuter strays and adopt out the puppies of the Potcakes that are found young enough to not be completely ferrrel. This is where Drake comes in. It turns out that someone (not sure who as of yet) brought some of Drake’s shelter and littermates back to the US after a vacation, specifically to Colorado. And about a month ago today, said dog was at a PetSmart near where we ate lunch.

We adopted drake not knowing too much about him or what a potcake was – at first we thought they were called “pupcates”. Now starting to be fully ingraned into our family we’re beginning to go through the grinding rigours of owning a puppy / “big” dog. Namely “oh, crap, I can’t do that I have to let the dog out” or “Yeah, let’s leave that route out, you might try to eat that cat again”. Least we forget “Supid rabits! Why are there SO MANY RABBITS at 5:15 AM on a walk!”

One really cool thing to see is the boys bonding with the dog. Man he can frustrate them, but they always bounce back and give him love he needs when he’s not acting like a troll (he was a couple days ago). I will say that J and Drake have made much more of a bond than I would have thought. I thought that for sure only little M would dig a “real boy’s dog” (no offense to Tarla meant – she’s just old and lazy – cuddly but not too fun for little kids). However, both of them are very enamored with the pup.