I had always wanted a dog, but my parents had cats and a backyard that isn’t fenced in, so when I bought a house with a fenced backyard in May of 2007, I knew I wanted a dog soon. I had been doing research for a few years and really liked the Elkhound breed, so I looked around for different breeders and found one in PA that I really liked. They were expecting a litter later that year, so I put my name on the waiting list. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough males in the litter, so I had to wait some more. Ratchet was finally born on January 11, 2008 and by the time he was 7 or 8 weeks old and had received his first set of shots, I was finally able to pick him up. He’s a purebred Norwegian Elkhound with a pedigree going back a few generations. His mother was named Fantasy and his father was named Breeze (who I think he’s almost a spitting image of).
Less than a week after bringing Ratchet home, he was diagnosed with Parvo (more on that later) and I was told he had a 50/50 chance of living. 10 days later and lots of money spent, Ratchet was able to come back to his fully sanitized home.
His puppyhood was pretty chaotic after the whole Parvo incident. He was constantly destroying any toy I could find and sometimes things that weren’t toys (carpet, stairs, banister, socks, shoes, etc). There are more than a few people who came into contact with Ratchet and thought they could tame him and have the scars to prove they were wrong. After Chelsea moved in, we tried everything to calm him down a bit, but it wasn’t until we brought Roo into the picture that he finally had a successful output for his energy/frustration.
He still has his moments where he’ll revert to his old ways, but they quickly pass – all-in-all though, life is WORLDS better with him now that Roo is around. We have to make sure we don’t leave socks, napkins, or chapstick tubes easily accessible, and we have to be smart in what toys we buy, but other than that, he doesn’t really tear things up anymore.
He may attack the door and window like a monster when people walk by, but once you get to know him, he’s just a big teddy bear that loves his throat scratched. And he may have bad grammar, but keep an eye out for him to post on here occasionally; it’s always entertaining!