Porter's Page!

I don't remember how we settled on the name "Molly", but we picked her out sometime in either late December 1994 or early January 1995. Puppies can't see or hear until two weeks after they're born, and Molly was born on December 11th, 1994; This means that she would have open her eyes on Christmas day that year, which means that we likely went to the farm where she was born right before or shortly after New Year's. It was my parents, me, and my dad's Navy buddy in my dad's 1993 S-10 Blazer; We drove to this Amish farm just over the state line in Maryland...

Anyway, it took a couple of weeks to come up with a name; "Queenie" was one of the names my mom threw out there

Like I said, I was only five years old and don't remember how exactly we settled on the name "Molly", but one of my parents threw it out there and we all agreed.

Molly was born on December 11th, 1994; She was seven weeks old when my parents brought her home, and I can tell you with utmost certainty that I was in kindergarten on the day my parents drove down to Maryland to pick her up, so it was mostly definite on a weekday. These things in mind, my parents most definitely brought Molly home on either January 30th (a Monday) or January 31st (a Tuesday) of 1995.

 

This is one of my favorite stories about Molly's puppyhood...

I attended kindergarten at a private school, which was also a daycare for kids ranging from babies to about four years old, and specialized in kids with learning disabilities. Our teacher, this woman in her twenties named Ms. Christie (yes, we called her by her first name, so I don't remember her last name), had a very fun way of teaching the alphabet. Every week for show and tell, she'd have us bring in something starting with a different letter of the alphabet; For example, on "A" day, a kid named Matthew brought in a toy ambulance. I'd always ended up bringing in a model car or a stuffed animal that had some sort of tie-in to that day's letter; I believe I brought in a model Chevy of sort (possibly the 1:18 scale 1970 Chevelle 454SS my grandma had gotten for me) for "C" day.

Anyway, on our "L" day, I was perplexed as to what I should bring in for show-and-tell, and consulted my parents; My dad suddenly blurted out "Labrador". Initially, I was confused, but then I realized what he was getting at...

My mom saw no harm in it as long as we got permission from the school first, so she called ahead and the front desk said there was no rule against bringing a puppy into the school for show-and-tell. So my dad drove me to school first, and then went back home to get Molly since show-and-tell wasn't the first thing on the agenda.

My classmates started asking me where my show-and-tell was, and the rule was normally to keep your item a secret until you showed it off, but Ms. Christie and I decided to spill the beans early; I do believe Ms. Christie moved show-and-tell forward an hour or two to make things more convenient for my dad.

The window of our classroom had a perfect view of the front parking lot and the road leading to the parking lot; As soon as my dad's black Chevy Blazer appeared, I sounded the alarm and the class went nuts.

 

So my dad brought Molly in, and as soon as he appeared at the window in our classroom door, the whole class erupted; Molly loved all the attention, but she got a bit overstimulated and peed on the carpet...

Ms. Christie was very understanding and helped my dad clean up the mess. My dad didn't spend more than thirty or forty minutes there, and when he took Molly home he left me with a bunch of classmates who were both jealous and grateful at the same time!

 

Mandy was named by the rescue for identification purposes only; She was one of three puppies found in a box by the side of the road in South Carolina. She had a sister named Madeline and a brother named Marcus; I have no idea if the people who adopted her siblings kept those names, but we decided we liked the name Mandy and it stuck...

 

Porter was originally named “Portugal” by the rescue; His brother, who’d already been adopted by then, had been given the name “Peru”...

As I said in the original post, one of the vice presidents of the company where my dad and I both work fosters dogs for the rescue where we adopted both Mandy and Porter. He had been selected to foster Porter, then named Portugal; He told my dad that he would love this new dog he’d just gotten and he surprised us by bringing him into work a little over week before the COVID shutdown (March 4th?).

My dad texted me to come down to the other guy’s office, and Porter was sleeping on the floor when I saw him for the first time; I immediately fell in love with him, and then my dad called my mom to come and meet him.

I was told that his name was Portugal, and the more I walked around the office with him the more I knew I had to have him!

My mom was skeptical at first, and didn’t really want a dog so soon after Mandy had passed, but she was outvoted by me and my dad and we brought him home four days later!

 

Porter will not go into the yard to pee unless I come out onto the deck to watch him...

 

Hanging out at @Gwyns04's suburban poultry farm again!