I thought I was at a place where I was comfortable not having a dog in our lives. One less responsibility. One less mess. Can come and go as we please. Can complete school without interruption (well one less interruption).
Well, my husband called me Saturday morning to let me know a customer of his had three lab/rot mixes. Should he bring one home? He would call me back in 10 minutes. What!?!?! I had 10 minutes to make a decision. He must have lost his mind. I wrote out a pro/con list. I talked to Sierra about it (Dakota was still sleeping).
The thing is I know where all of my family members will weigh in on the decision. My husband will take almost any dog. He sees it and he thinks we should have it, but luckily he knows the ultimate decision is mine, since I will bear 90% or more of the responsibility. Sierra really wants another dog. She misses having a dog and thinks about it often. That being said, she is also extremely practical. If I give her the pros and cons, she will look at the cons and say it is not a good decision and we shouldn't do it, no matter how much she wants one. Dakota is usually one that think s we should wait. He really wants a dog, but after the last experience we are all just a little leery. Chloe . . . well, what can I say, she is 8. She would take any dog at any time.
So here I sit - knowing how much my kids want/need a dog - trying to weigh out how much it would change our lives. Napoleon was the most wonderful dog ever. So laid back. We never had to worry about leaving him home alone, about accidents, about chewing, about digging. He was such a good boy.
One of my biggest concerns was that these puppies were kept outside with their mother. None of them had received any type of vaccination or veterinary care. The risk was too great and knowing that black and tan breeds are more susceptible to parvo made me all the more scared.
I got online and looked at our local shelter to see if they still had a puppy I had seen several weeks ago. They sis not, but they did have a white American bulldog that was an adult. I knew my husband would be in love with this dogs looks. He always is gravitated toward these types of dogs. So on our date night we headed to the shelter to meet Olivia. We both adored her. We were just getting ready to have someone get her out for us when we saw her jump. She jumped over 6 feet to look what was happening on the kennel behind her. Well that was not gonna work. Our fence was only 4.5 feet. The guy working hteir informed us any large dog was probably out of the question and medium sized dogs were iffy for our height of fence. We never had a problem with Napoleon, but he was such a special and mellow dog. We did not want to risk it with a new dog.
We then walked past the puppy room. I fell in love with a Doxie-mix. She was precious. Brent was less than thrilled. We decided we would think about it and return on Tuesday when they would be open again.
We headed off on our date night and ran some errands. We stopped at a Whole Foods to pick up some things and noticed they had a local rescue group there with their dogs. We did not even talk about it, we both just headed straight for the dogs. I saw a cuties and was reading his sheet. Brent surprised me and said he thought he was a good looking dog. He was a small dog. Brent and Dakota are not small dog people, so I was surprised to say the least. He decided we should take him out and meet him. One of the volunteers asked if we wanted to fill out paperwork on him and Brent said yes. Whoa!! I was thinking. This is going way too fast. They wanted to know if we wanted to take him home or pick him up on Monday after he was neutered and had his shots. I was not ready to make a decision so quickly. It was crazy busy there and we had no way of seeing his personality or anything. I was feeling a bit panicky. When I explained this to one of the volunteers she told him that we could foster to adopt. In other words, we could take him home for two weeks to see how he does with Chloe and how he adjusts to our home, then we can make the decision on whether or not to adopt him. I was SO relieved.
Tonight we are scheduled to pick him up and bring him to our home. He was just neutered today, had his shots and had his dew-claws removed. He will be a very traumatized little boy.
Wish us all luck!
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