Skylar

I was woken today by a phone call from the puppy courier.  He had had a breakdown in the M6 and so needed to change his plans, could we take our puppy today instead of tomorrow?!
Yes!
I ran back into the bedroom and woke Murray excitedly.  "We need to get that rhododendron out of the garden, sort out the living room and get a new bin!" I cried.
He groaned something in reply and rolled over!
Undeterred I got up, went to the gym (go me!) and took Jed to get a new bin as I really couldn't face a new puppy with a broken bin!
Just after eleven the van rolled up and out came Skylar.  He is gorgeous. Keith, the courier, brought him into the kitchen and he stood there looking at us for a short while, but then started to warm up and enjoyed the attention although he was still quite quiet. Just as I was asking Keith when Skylar had last been to the loo and he was telling me he had recently been in the van, Skylar decided to make the hallway his own!  This made it harder through the day to get him to pee and poop outside as he wanted to go back to the same place, but by the same evening, yes, really, the same evening, he had caught on and was doing it outside.
Throughout the rest of the day, he found his feet, and spent some time individually with each member of the family.  Imogen had a seizure and he was calm with her and stayed with her, not bolting or running away.  He followed her around the garden and she enjoyed hugging him, although she was full on or full off with him.  It was lovely to see each one start to develop their relationship with him.
Jed, as a sibling of a child with special needs sometimes struggles.  Imogen gets more attention than him, (partly because her disabilities demand it, and partly due to her personality) and he struggles with this sometimes. He needs extra patience with her and he has a deep sense of responsibility for her.  He always stays near if we are out and when we are on holiday and the like he will watch her like a hawk, telling us if he feels that she is too far away or we aren't watching her well enough.  He has rescued her a couple of times when she has had seizures in the pool, so he is a great older brother. But I wasn't sure if Skylar would add wood to the fire, in the fact that on top of everything else, even though (in his eyes) she can be a right pain, she is now getting a dog too.
My heart melted when this evening, he turned to me and said "I think Skylar is really going to pull our family together." I could have cried.