Haven't been around here in a while guys, lot of crap going on in my life these days (mostly depressing financial related stuff with the occasional family issue thrown in for good measure) but one bright spot is our new puppy. Meet Emerald, known as Emmie @ 10 weeks in the pic from earlier this week:

We went with Emerald to continue our theme of naming our females after precious stones - our two female Rotts are Ruby (RIP) and Jade (still going strong at 4.5 years old) but Emmie works better on a day-to-day and dog training basis. She's a pure German Shepherd, mom is standard color and dad is all black. She'll come out somewhere in the middle with a strong lean towards mom I think.