Getting back in the saddle, so to speak

We were talking the other day and C mentioned that he was pretty ready to start looking for another dog. As much as we’d like to be the people who take our dog everywhere, we’re not. And Junebug really likes having other dogs around. However, her new found shyness at the dog park has meant that she hasn’t had much play and romping.

Considering C and I had both been spending time on petfinder.com as well as the local animal shelter sites, we had put together a pretty good list of what we were looking for.

1)      A young dog. Having lost 2 in 16 months, we’d like to go 10 years or so without losing another.

2)      A small/medium sized dog. June is around 30lbs. Something a little bigger than her would be fine, but not back up to the Smokey size 70lbs.

3)      Short hair. We are bad at grooming. Having Zoey visit us was good, as it reminded us that while we love Shelties, we would be terrible at caring for their coat

4)      Not a super high energy dog. We loved Moree with every fiber of our beings, but we were bad Aussie parents. We would not make good Border Collie parents, or any of the really high energy dogs, despite how much we like the other traits of the breed.

But here’s the truth about us, we can make all the lists we want. Once we go meet the dogs, it all goes out the window. When we got Smokey, we were looking for older than Moree, smaller than Moree, and female. Smokey was none of those things. He was perfect.

Our willpower has to come as we’re looking at the dogs, because once we decide to meet one, its coming home with us.