We set out pretty methodically to prepare ourselves for our first dog.We read everything we could lay our hands on, from the AKC Standards Manual and Barbara Woodhouse, to Brian Kilcommons and The Monks of New Skete. We carefully planned out our crate-training method; we even pre-registered him to begin obedience classes before he turned six months old. But dogs are like kids really. One’s as different as the next, and equally as unpredicitable. Sure, there’s a lot of fundamental breed characteristics, and we laid out a pretty good plan to manage the realities of what would become a large, strong-willed independent dog. We had our minds finely tuned to the task. But never, not for a minute, did we truly realize what he would do to our hearts.