My middle child, Tom

Tom is another guy that got overlooked this year as he came at a busy time.  Also, we didn't write/talk about him for awhile because we thought people would judge us for getting a new dog so slow close to my due date. 

Actually in September we came close to buying a little dog that was on sale but changed our minds because we thought it would be too much with the baby.  And then when we kind of changed our minds back and wanted to buy it, we looked online but the dog had been sold.  It was a maltese/dachund mix that was adorable and would have been a good size, but we weren't terribly crushed when it was sold.  Anyway, while looking online to see if the dog was still available we saw that there were four cairn terriers in Osaka.  A female for $1800 and three males for $1400.  That was definitely too much money, but we decided to check now and then in case the price went down.  At the beginning of October  the female was gone but the males were down to $1200.  Then $800.  Again, I was just looking.  My family had cairns almost my whole life and they are great dogs.  I never thought I would find one in Japan but here they were.  At the same time, it was mostly just dreaming on my part.

Then one Saturday Motoaki and I were on our way to Osaka to go to Costco and a big electronics store and I thought I would just check.  There was a male left and he was down to $400.  Since the store is close to Costco and since we needed dog food for Finn anyway, we thought we would go look.  We got there and he was asleep so we looked at some of the other dogs.  Motoaki asked if I wanted to get the cairn out of the cage, but I said we needed to think about it.  Motoaki was like, we wouldn't have come if we didn't think we were getting a dog.  This surprised me as I thought I was the only one who had been thinking about him.

Of course you can't hold a puppy and then say no.  Well, maybe some people can, but I can't.  So we got Tom Sawyer, a 5 month old cairn terrier.   We realized that this was a little dumb and that we were probably taking on too much.  But, he came potty trained for the pee sheet/litter box thing they have in Japan like Finn.  And living in the pet store he was crate trained as well.

Finn started out being absolutely terrified of Tom which was quite funny since Finn probably has 10 or 12 pounds on him.  We thought Finn would be growling and chasing him , but it was the opposite.  Tom wasn't growling at Finn at first but he wanted to play with him and so he followed Finn, but Finn would run away.  For the first week it stayed like this.  Then they started wrestling the second week.  By the third week they were full on playing together.  They still get angry at each other and can be competetive with food/toys/treats, but for the most part they get along.

Motoaki always says that Finn has a glass heart, and it's true.  He gets nervous easily and though he will kind of put up  a fight with Tom, he usually backs down pretty easily.  He likes to cuddle and gets upset if you leave him alone in a room.  As a puppy he was afraid of everything and it took him forever to get up the courage to jump up and down from furniture or to walk too far ahead of us on the leash.

Tom couldn't be more different.  He is very scrappy and couragous and was never really afraid of anything in the house.  He is actually pretty good with keeping himself occupied.  You can leave him in a room or in his cage with some chew toys and he will play happily for hours.  Unfortunately Finn always interupts this play.  He is pretty good at controlling his pee but does have a bad habit of chewing on things like the carpet or wires.  He doesn't really seem to notice Robin yet (while Finn loves to sniff her and will try to lick her head when I feed her).  I feel bad as he sometimes gets looked over when we are taking care of Robin's needs, but he doesn't seem to notice.  And I justify it (somewhat) by thinking that if we didn't have Robin I would be at work all day anyway.

I'm glad we got Tom as he definitely keeps Finn occupied.  And he is very sweet with me (Motoaki prefers Finn since he is easier to train).  I can't wait for two years to pass when all three of my babies are old enough to play together.  I can just imagine the three of them chasing each other in our big hallway or going for long walks.  I am so excited for Robin to have playmates in the dogs, and the same for Finn.  Even though he sometimes gets a little upset that I am paying attention to the other two, he also seems to be less bored than he was with Motoaki and I.