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Link on one of our walks near the cottage

Pretty much everything in my life has changed since I last posted something on the blog. I've been pregnant and given birth to a beautiful baby girl. I've gotten married. I've lost my best friend and best dog in the world, Link, and gotten a new dog, Eddie.
Since this is a "dog blog", I will not dwell on the first part, but focus on the latter, the dog part.

My beautiful Link

We lost Link during our vacation in Sweden this summer. Long story short; he was hit by a car and died instantly. This is now almost 3 months ago, and still not a day goes by that I don't miss him terribly. Just last night I dreamt that we were out doing field training with other retrievers and their owners. He did so well, he was happy and I was so proud of him. But alas, that will never happen again. He will never lie close to me again, never beg at the dinner table, never happily offer behavior during clicker sessions and never excitedly wag his tail while I pack dog training stuff in my bag to go out and train with him.

Me and Link

He was with me during the hardest parts of my pregnancy and was a saint when we brought our little daughter home from the hospital. He was my first baby, even though we weren't the same species. In my mind he was really my baby. I loved him more than what is possible to express with words. He was my best friend, my baby and my rock. I will never love an other dog like I loved him. Now he is gone. It is times like this I wish I believed in some kind of heaven. I would like the thought of him being somewhere nice, where I could run around and play and be happy. But he is just gone, and somehow I have to find a way to accept that.

Link and my daughter

To fill the void, but not in any way to replace Link, we started looking for a new golden retriever puppy. We found a breeder a couple of hours away from where my mom lives. She had a litter of golden puppies, and one male left for sale. We went to see them, and as always when just visiting a breeder "to have a look", we decided we wanted little Eddie. Or Dio as we thought we would call him at the time.

Me and Eddie the first time we met.

Eddie would not be old enough to leave his mom for another week, so we returned a week later to take him home to my mom's. It was when we were driving from the breeder that we decided that the name "Dio" was not right, he felt more like an Eddie.

Eddie the day we brought him home.

We had another 2 weeks left of the vacation when we got Eddie. We also had an 1800 km long drive to get home.. Considering that we had a 4 month old baby and a 2 months old puppy with us, it went really smooth! Both of them slept for most of the time, and when we stopped to feed the baby, we fed and played with the puppy.

Eddie's mother.

When we got to Norway, we stopped at the family cottage and stayed there for a couple of days. Here Eddie met my in-law's dog Scott. He is a Danish Swedish farm dog and he is 6 years old. He is the sweetest dog in the world, but he is too much of a push over for his own good. I believe he was relieved that Link had finally started to act like an adult, and here we bring home a new puppy! He was less than pleased, but like always he was very nice to the puppy and had more patience than he should've with all the puppy shenanigans.

Eddie when we were back from our vacation in Sweden.

So here we are. Marriage, baby and new dog. Lots of things to be happy about and thankful for. Don't take me wrong, I do appreciate the things I have. One thing is certain though, nothing and no one could ever replace Link.