Our Lucky Boy
About 2 months before we left for Ireland, we had decided to buy a Border Collie puppy and bring it back home with us from Ireland. We started planning the puppy’s travel about a month before we left. It was an incredibly long process thanks to COVID and the ever changing flights and cancellations.
After much research, I found Churchmount Working Sheepdogs on YouTube and had watched nearly all of Paddy’s videos. On a whim, we messaged and asked if he had any puppies available and he did!
I had fallen in love Paddy’s dogs Bruce and Bert. They are both tenacious workers, but Bert is hardcore. He goes to work and doesn’t stop, regardless if that means getting knocked down a hill by a sheep, he gets up and keeps going! So, we were quite happy he had pups by Bert and out of a daughter of Bruce. A little bit of both dogs!
We named him Lucky because he was lucky to be able to fly back to Texas! We didn’t know his final flight details until about 3 days before he was supposed to fly out, which was a day before us. Back home, it was still crazy hot and Dallas put a hold on pets flying in. So Lucky had to fly to Houston and we had to have a friend pick him up in Houston since he arrived the day before us. And we were flying into Dallas, not Houston.
When we first arrived in Dublin, we had arranged to go to Paddy’s house and pick out our pup from the litter. Ireland was in the middle of a “heatwave” and the poor pups were so hot. It was nice to us, but they aren’t used to 80+ degree heat. Paddy was also nice enough to keep him while we traveled for a month and then to let us pick him up two weeks before we were to leave. Plus he worked with us on getting him his papers from the vet for traveling.
Having a puppy for two weeks in Ireland was a blast. We got to bond with him and spend time with him before we brought him home to our other three dogs.
We found a super nice AirBnB in Carlow, which wasn’t too terribly far from Dublin. It was pet-friendly with a big yard for him to play in. Plus, it was an organic farm, so we had access to amazing Irish beef right outside our door. We even took him to the Irish National Stud. Ireland is very dog-friendly!
