Meet Nola: Kate's New Rescue Pup

Despite all of the crazy uncertainty of this season, this week unexpectedly turned out to be one of the best ever. Why? Because my husband Brett and I finally found the rescue pup of our dreams!

Meet Nola - she is a Wheaten Terrier mix and a total sweetheart. We picked her up in San Diego this weekend and we are absolutely in love!

We’ve been excited about getting our first dog together since we met almost 11 years ago, and now finally felt like the right time to start looking.

We would have gotten a dog much much sooner if it weren’t for the crazy amount of travel we’ve both historically had to do for work, but with everybody staying home during this quarantine season it felt like a unique opportunity to be able to spend the ample time necessary to help train and habituate her.

Above is our first picture as a family of three! We’re just outside the pet store where we adopted her from the rescue organization.

The rescue organization thinks Nola is between about 18 months to 2 years old. She has a super sweet disposition but is definitely still very playful and VERY curious.

Nola’s name was listed as “Marcy” when we found her on Petfinder, and this dark photo above was the only one they had in the listing.

We both knew our ideal breed of dog was something like a Wheaten Terrier, because I grew up with small furry terriers and Brett grew up with big Labs and hunting dogs - so a Wheaten or something like it felt like a good meeting in the middle.

I basically stalked Petfinder multiple times a day to see if any rescues popped up with that type of look, and Saturday morning there was Nola! The rescue agency was kind enough to let us Face Time with her, and once we did we knew right away we had to make the 2 hour trip to San Diego from LA to meet her.

It was kind of extra cool that we ended up adopting her from San Diego, because Brett and I actually met in San Diego back in 2009! Kind of a fun way for our little fam to come full circle.

She was so good during the car ride back to LA! She pretty much slept on my lap the whole way.

We decided on her name during the car ride back to LA, and we picked it because we got married in New Orleans, LA! It was actually my sis Courtney’s idea and as soon as she said it we felt like it just fit.

She has absolutely no idea what her name is yet (and she didn’t know her rescue name Marcy either lol) so hopefully she starts to know it soon.

So why did we decide to go with a rescue vs. a puppy? We went back and forth, and ultimately I feel like adding a new pet to your family is such a personal decision and everyone has their totally valid reasons for choosing one or the other.

Ultimately, we felt like if we could find a rescue that felt right for our family that would be our preference. So many of my friends and family have rescued pups in the past and had such a wonderful experience, plus it felt like a good opportunity to potentially find a dog that already had some degree of training.

On top of that, we loved the idea of giving a sweet doggo who’d been through a rough patch a second chance at a good life. Nola has an old injury on her back left leg from being hit by a car some time ago, and she’ll always walk with a limp. Her injury is healed and doesn’t hurt her, so she’s still able to go for lots of walks and has tons of energy! We totally fell in love with her and felt like she would be the perfect addition to our little fam!

I am over the moon excited to have this little furball as a part of our fam and I can’t wait to get to know her better!

I’m also having so much fun looking for cute puppy stuff - especially from small businesses. I just ordered Nola these collar tags from Etsy:

Thanks for letting me share our happy news in the midst of such a crazy time!

We’ve both grown up with dogs but this is our first family dog together, so any tips on adjusting a rescue pooch to her new home would be amazing! Have you ever rescued a pet??