Sambora Harley Rolston

Since this blog is primarily about Baby Rolston, I should write about the original Baby Rolston... my four-legged son Sammy. He is the absolute light of our lives. I've not yet come across one person who has met Sam and not fallen in love. Dave and I cannot believe how lucky we got with Sam's personality - he is so loving, so goofy, and such a good boy in general. Shortly after his litter was first born (on December 16, 2007), we were sent photos of them, two boys, four girls.

This was Sammy at four weeks:

We weren't really sure from looking at the pictures, which one we'd end up wanting.
But we knew we'd have to go down to MD to meet them in person, to make the ultimate decision. And because our dear friends Dave and Suzi only lived about 30 minutes from Mary and Sheilah (the breeders), we figured we could make a weekend trip and kill two birds with one stone.
So, at the end of January, we made the trek to pick out our future child. We were the first to go see the puppies so we were told we could have the pick of the litter. I was pretty dead set on a boy, but I was willing to keep an open mind and just see which of the dogs really stuck out to us.
When we finally got there, we were swarmed by six adorable little Berner pups scrambling around the yard. I remember the sheer excitement as I realized the possibilities! We were

introduced to each of them, but Dave and I immediately fell in love with the same one... the runt of the litter, who was originally named Teddy. He wasn't the most outgoing of the bunch, or the best looking per se, but we both instantly knew this would be our baby.

Leaving Maryland that day was the worst thing EVER. I did not want to leave that little puppy behind! But we knew that he wasn't quite ready to leave his Mama yet, and that we would come back and get him a month later when we got back from our little vacation that we had coming up. The breeders had graciously offered to keep him until our return, so at least we knew he'd be in the best of care until we were able to take him home with us in March.
But two weeks later, we had a free Sunday, and we decided that we wanted to go back down and visit our baby again. He was all we could think about that entire time! So down we drove, back to Maryland... and when we arrived, only Mary was there. And that day, she changed our lives forever. She strongly suggested that we take him home; that even though we had a vacation coming up in two weeks... we would miss so many cute puppy moments if we didn't... and she really wanted us to have that chance! She said that if we brought him back down before we went away, they would still keep him for us while we were on the cruise. All of his brothers and sisters had already gone to their forever homes, and he was ready to come to us. So... against our better judgement, and without any preparations made at home, we went home with our furbaby. He rode in my arms, crying at first and scrambling to get out, and then finally settled in and slept. It was so special. I could not believe we did it! I couldn't wait to watch him grow up into the amazingly wonderful dog he has now become.