He's Not Aggressive. He's Just a Big Baby.

Y'all! I have fantastic news to share today! As of this past weekend, we are the proud parents to this sweet boy. Internet, meet Gambit!!

I'm sure as most of y'all are well aware, we brought home Gambit on Saturday. He's a rescue baby. The family we adopted him from had been fostering him for a few months. He showed up in their front yard in the fall, and they spend several weeks trying to find his family. After a month of no one calling from flyers, they decided to foster him and try to find his forever home. They got him neutered and got all of his shots up to date.

If y'all didn't know: Josh delivers medical equipment for hospices. This past week, he happened to get sent to this family's house to pick up some equipment because the family's father passed away. Josh is very good at what he does in that he does a lot to make a family feel comfortable given that he's there in very unfortunate circumstances. After talking with them for several minutes, they asked if he knew of anyone looking for a dog. That's when they took him outside to meet Gambit. Only they had been calling him Leo. Josh fell in love! Shortly after, I got the text with "Can we keep him?" Long story short, I said yes.

The "Can we keep him?" Picture.

Here's where I would like to step onto my own personal little soapbox for a moment. Last week when I announced via social media that we would be getting Gambit, I immediately started getting bad feedback from friends and family. Comments like "That's a full bred pitbull, Melissa. He shouldn't be around kids." Or, "you can't trust that dog. WHY is he a rescue? He's not a good family dog."

Stuff like that pissed me off. Esp since some of the comments came from my father. Someone I thought would've been fully supportive of us getting a rescue. ANY rescue. Nope. He was the biggest naysayer of them all. It upset me to the point of ranting on Twitter, and calling both Amanda and Cassie to vent. I knew they would be willing to be angry with me and remind me that pits ARE sweeties at heart.

What a lot of people don't realize is the dogs that are typically "misunderstood" or the ones that people tend to be "scared of" are the sweetest little cuddle bugs. Like Gambit. I'll tell y'all like I told my dad: the breed that people should really be worried about are Dalmatians. When 101 dalmatians came out from Disney in 1996, my step dad bought a dalmatian for my step sister. She was I think three or four at the time. She was a puppy, and grew up with us. She was really great with all of us, but no matter how hard we tried we couldn't socialize her to be friendly with anyone outside of the family. She was just mean. The vet said it's in their nature to be like that. There's several dogs out there like that. Pitbull's however: are not those dogs.

I found this article on Saturday and shared it via Facebook. A friend commented saying "Omg, I was suspicious of this article at first, but most of these breeds are spot on!" She works at PetSmart in the grooming and training departments. It's a list / slide of the top 10 most aggressive dogs. Pits aren't on the list. Imagine that. 

So to those of y'all that are convinced that dogs like Gambit are mean and vicious, I have a few pictures. Because what's the saying? One picture is worth 1,000 words? 

I mean just look at that face, y'all! He's the sweetest boy and the biggest baby of the family! 

Given that it's Monday, I'm linking up with Emily to start the week with a Grateful Heart. I'm grateful that we were able to adopt Gambit and bring him into our family. I'm grateful that the kids get to experience the joy of growing up with a dog. Gambit is still very much a puppy and we have many more years with him in our family. 

He's still adjusting to being an "inside dog". I'm not sure what happened to him before he showed up at his foster family's house, but it's very clear that he was never an "inside dog". On his first day with us, he literally put all of his body weight down, refusing to come into the house. He had severe anxiety about being inside. Either he was mistreated inside, or he was trained not to come in the house. Either way, it took Josh carrying him inside the house. He's absolutely happy to be outside. 

"nope... not coming in... you can't make me"

As the days have passed, he's gotten better about being in the house. We don't have to carry him in the house anymore, and he'll come freely. However, it's very clear that we need to get several large area rugs as he hasn't quite figured out how to walk on hardwood floors and tile. Poor baby. For now we have lots of blankets on the floor so he feels comfortable walking. 

I'm beyond grateful for this sweet boy to be in our home and in our lives. 

What are you grateful for?