Well, time sure flies and Yume is now six-months old. Time with her has been great at times and very challenging at others. I am sure all puppy owners must feel the same at some point. Anyway, she is healthy and growing.

Yume has arrived! She flew in from Sapporo and we took her for her first experience on grass, she had only been in snow until now. She has been with us for a week and it has had it's ups and downs. Dealing with the general nipping, chewing and puppy energy has been challenging, but she is settling in and when not in full energy mode is just so darn cute. She learned sit and down very quickly and has been pretty good at playing fetch as well. She is like a little vacuum cleaner though and I am constantly pulling things from her mouth. She is now 10-weeks old and weighs about 4.5 kilos.

Well, here goes the first blog post. It is now the beginning of March and we have exactly one month before the big move to Canada. In a future post I will explain how all this happened, but for now let me just say we have found our dog and we have 2-weeks of waiting before she arrives in Tokyo from Hokkaido. We have named her 北夢 (Kita Yume) which translates to Northern Dream. She was born on December 14, 2013 and below is a picture of her at 5-weeks.

After deciding that the Hokkaido-ken was the breed I really wanted it was time for the search to begin. I tried various Nihon Ken shows near Tokyo, but no one had any information on the elusive Hokkaido-ken. I realized the only way I was going to be able to find a dog was to visit Hokkaido and somehow try to find a breeder. I found out that the main Hokkaido-ken show was being help in October in Sapporo and so we booked the tickets and starting planning the trip. The show was great, we met lots of dogs, breeders and a new friend that eventually helped us to find our pup.