Shelter Dog It Is

We decided that we were going to find a dog in a shelter that needed a home. The best thing someone can do is save a lost dog that has no family. I began looking for dogs in shelters. Truly we wanted a puppy or very young dog, but sometimes you just can’t find what you think you want. We still wanted a terrier so I kept doing searches for various types of terriers. 

On December 19th I was going through Adopt A Pet searching fox terriers and widened my search a bit further than normal. There was a young fox terrier mix that to me looked like a rat terrier. She was in North Carolina, which was a few hours away. I marked the page and kept on going. She was several hours away and I thought it was a bit far. 

After a couple of days I went back and found her again. The one thing that stood out to me (I’m a cheapskate) was the adoption fee was only $70. All the local shelter adoption fee’s ranged from $150 to $200. At that price you almost felt like you should just get a pure bred. They say the fee is to pay for the medications and spay/neuter surgery, but I think it is really to keep people that can’t afford pets from adopting them. Anyhow, this made a two hour drive much more worth it. So, I sent the ad to my wife and checked in to see what she thought. She pointed out that the dog was a bit bigger than we wanted, by 10 pounds. You don’t realize how much 10 pounds really is until you are up close and personal, trust me it’s a LOT. We talked through it and decided we would give it a shot and see if the dog liked us and we liked her. 

I filled out the adoption paperwork online, since it was now the week of Christmas (December 21, 2014) I didn’t expect to hear back at least until the next Monday. However, my phone rang only a couple hours after submitting the paperwork. 

Jean, the foster home where the dog was located called me to talk about the adoption. She said she enjoyed what I wrote about our other pets and we discussed how difficult it is to lose one. For anyone that wants to read my application (it’s really not interesting) here’s a link to a text file (I bold/underlined the parts I wrote). After a brief conversation Jean told me that we are okay to come see the dog and decide if she’s a fit for us. I told her I would discuss it a bit further with my wife and let her know. Of course I called Jean back not long after and told her we would like to come see her and received the directions. 

Next will be our trip to meet Penny. Then I will have our ride home, some other stories about toys in the bed, learning commands, some crazy opossum, awkward poses, Penny watching TV, and a blanket she just couldn't live without...