Meet Coffee! She is a lab mix and the newest addition to our Homestead. Isn’t she adorable? (I know you’re thinking YES right?)

Please allow me to give you her back story. A few weeks ago we received a call….not just a regular call, but a FaceTime call from our daughter telling us that they have puppies at Walmart. I was like “uh Walmart sells puppies?” “No mom.” Then she turns the camera around and my heart melted! There were puppies caged in the back of a truck. Their owner wasn’t able to keep them after his dog ran off and came back pregnant. They were all so cute, but what really did it for me was the one word I needed to hear, FREE!

So I began to pick one out over the video call. Meanwhile my husband was in the background, saying “no…no….NO!” At first I was discouraged thinking well maybe I won’t be getting a puppy after all. Then I had the thought of how we needed to replace our dog, Dusty. Dusty was a stray we rescued. We loved him, but he loved to eat chickens so we gave him to a family without any.

Needless to say I had to ask my husband a little more than once while pleading my case. There were some trade offs and we had to make a phone call to our youngest son for approval, but he finally said YES! That yes was conditional though….we couldn’t pick out a puppy over FaceTime, so off we went.

Now originally my Dusty replacement was supposed to be a MANS dog. You know like a German Shepard or a Rottweiler. I mean I had the name picked out and everything! So this whole “free puppy” thing was messing me up! I couldn’t name a lab, Roscoe. It just didn’t seem to fit.

Since we gave Dusty to a new family, I was sure that my replacement would be a male dog. The problem was when I arrived I saw this girl above. You can’t tell it from the picture, but she has these eyes and…..well she lives here now so you get it.

The moral of the story is if your daughter or someone else you know calls you and says FREE puppies and you have a place in your heart and home where that animal can be cared for and loved, then just do it. You won’t regret it!