Forearmed with knoweldge, we return

The next day, after doing our errands, C left it up to me whether we went back to Seattle Humane or not. There had been a number of dogs we were interested in, and we’d only met two. Granted, in the past, we’d always taken home the first dog we met, but we needed to not feel guilty about not being the right home for Tawny or Sasha.

Going in, knowing that I might be the problem, actually made things a little easier.

Saturdays are busy days at the shelter. We thought it was busy and were told that no, it was actually a pretty slow day for them. That felt good.

We walked up and down the row of kennels. We went outside and talked about what we wanted to do. There were some older dogs, and we knew we had said no older dogs, but we thought, maybe if we know going in that we’re going to be their end of life home…

There were some dogs that we were interested in that had been adopted (yay!) and one that we thought we might want to meet, but he was having another meet right then.

We also discussed looking at the bigger dogs. If we were looking for a personality more like Smokey’s, maybe we needed to look at the labs or the pits.

C decided against pits for now. Yes, we’ve met a lot of wonderful pits, but the prejudice can get to you after a while, and Smokey wasn’t just a sweet dog, he was once in a lifetime sweet. We got lucky with him, and he didn’t think he was really up to dealing with a pit mix that wasn’t quite so amazing.

So we walked down the aisle one more time. We once again decided on two dogs.

The first was Bryant**, a lovely chocolate lab. But one look at his paperwork told us he was not the dog for us- he needs to be the only pet in the house, and we can’t provide that.

So, we decided to meet Larry. Larry is a 3 year old listed as a Jack Russell/ACD mix. He’s the right age, right size, right coat, but energy level could be a concern. There are also concerns for me around the Jack Russell-ness, as they tend to be dogs who really need dominant owners. I am, for the most part, not dominant enough to be a good JRT  owner.

But, his assessment listed him as a wallflower. He had also been an owner surrender, who most likely had been neglected. Apparently, his previous owner claimed the reason he was so skinny was that he only ate steak.

Larry wasn’t really interested in sniffing around the meet and greet area, he was interested in us. He took treats from us very gently.

He was also happy to go with us when we got up to move around.

C and I looked at each other. We had found our new family member.

**I hope this link does not work for you, as that would mean that Bryant has been adopted.