Today is Scout’s first birthday!

Last October we met with a bloodhound breeder who lives about 2 hours south of us to pick out our puppy. The pups were nine weeks old at the time. Bloodhounds are usually either black and tan or red. Since we already had a black and tan male, I wanted a red female.

How could you not instantly fall in love with that face??

Hank came along with us to help pick out the puppy. He approved of our choice.

We worked it out with the breeder that we would pick up Scout in a month, after running the Richmond Half. Shortly before Thanksgiving, we headed back down the road to pick up Scout and bring her home. She was around 13 or 14 weeks old.

After getting settled in her first night, she hit it off with Hank and they became best buddies.

When Scout first came home she had a baby named ‘gator’ that she carried around with her everywhere. When we would let her out of her crate in the morning, she would have to bring gator out of the crate and set him by her food bowl before going outside to potty. It was pretty cute.

A few months later, she decided to chew that toy to shreds. That was the end of gator. I bought her another baby, which was supposed to be made out of tough material that dogs won’t chew up. Someone forgot to tell Scout, though.

Death to gator #2

Now a days we mostly stick to rawhides, which are probably her favorite anyway. When she’s really happy or gets really excited, she’ll grab a bone or other toy and run around growling while wagging her tail.

Outside of chewing things up and running around growling, Scout is a big fan of naps.

Ears make good blinders from the light.

She loves to sleep in a lot of weird positions. I don’t know how some of these are the least bit comfortable.

While we were at the beach, her favorite thing to do was climb up onto the couch and stretch out as much as possible.

When she’s not sleeping, she’s usually following Hank around. She loves to run around with him in the yard and loves to jump on his back and bite his neck (Hank does not love this so much). She has done so since she was little.

And continues to do so now that she is nearly full grown.

Aside from harassing Hank, Scout also enjoys pestering the cows in the field behind our house. She talks big, but I think she would run away if there weren’t a fence between her and the cows.

She experienced snow for the first time this past winter. She had a blast running around in it, but soon she got wet and cold and then all she wanted to do was come inside and take a nap.

Once it got to be spring, she loved all of the rain because it made mud in the backyard which was oodles of fun to play in. Barry and I were not as impressed by the mud.

Scout also holds a degree in Puppy Kindergarten and is a proud graduate from the PetsMart training school.

Her love for naps continued to be strong. When other puppies were busy wagging their tails and hopping around at class, she would lay down and go to sleep. Maybe she just wasn’t being challenged enough? It’s hard to believe that she’s already one year old and that we’ve had her for nearly nine months.

Happy Birthday, Scout!