Woman’s Best Friend

Remember the story I told you about where I temporarily went insane and made 3 trips to the local animal shelter in 1 week, ending up adopting 2 more dogs?  I wrote that story here.  If you want to refresh your memory or you’re new here, go read that and then come back.  So I’ve had several requests for photos of the dogs, to put faces with the names in my story perhaps.  I’m sharing these here today.

Here’s Ginger.  Isn’t she a beauty?  The one I started out with back in June.  You can read my first announcement about her from this past summer and see a picture of her in the thralls of relaxation here.  She is the reason I went to the animal shelter, to find her a playmate.  She’s a big girl, but she’s a puppy and wants to jump and play and bite.  I wanted her to have a friend to play with and teach her to be a little calmer because she’s lonely during the day with my daughter at school.  I mentioned this in the original story.  So I went to the shelter looking.  On my first day at the shelter I saw starved and shy Sophie but didn’t bring her home because she was a big dog and I didn’t want to have 2 big dogs running around here.  I came home emptyhanded. 

I went back 4 days later and found a medium-sized dog but just couldn’t really make up my mind.  I decided I’d go back the next morning and adopt her if I still wanted her.  On the way out my daughter and I saw Buddy the Pomeranian, and the next thing I knew he was riding home with us in the car because we’d adopted him.  (But I still had that first dog Sophie stuck in my head.  There was something about this dog.  She was so meek and so starved and skinny.  You could count every bone in her body,  not just her ribs.  She just touched my heart.  I saw her again that day and again felt like I couldn’t take her because she was too big.) We adopted Buddy and thought he’d be a good companion for Ginger to play with since the shelter folks told us he was still pretty spunky for his age, so I felt like I had to quit thinking about Sophie and let it go.  Turns out Buddy HATES Ginger!  Every time she goes near him to sniff him or try to play, he wants to bite her and chase her away.  Which is pretty funny considering she’s much bigger than him.  He’s a brat! 

Here’s Buddy the little brat. 

So as the story goes, back to the animal shelter I went to adopt the medium-sized dog we had seen the day before.  Fate intervened and that dog was taken already.  But I turned around and there in the cage behind me was Sophie.  Again.  And again that dog touched my heart.  She sat there so quiet while all the other dogs were going crazy (it was half price adoption day and the place had a million people in it looking at dogs–but not at her) but not my Sophie.  She sat there quietly and looked up at me through the bars like she had the other times I’d been there.  It was like she’d been patiently waiting for me to come back to get her.  And my heart said she’s coming home with us. 

And here’s my Sophie girl.  We’ve had her a full 4 weeks and while she’s still pretty thin, I’m much happier with the way she looks.  Before those ribs were sticking out her sides.  It was terrible.  This dog just crawled into my heart and she’s staying here.  She’s so gentle and sweet and just wants LOVE so badly.  When you reach down to pet her, she just sits right down on your feet.  Is she trying to say she doesn’t want you to move?  “Just stand right there and pet me all day please.”  Someone has obviously beaten her at some point in her life, though, and that saddens me.  Whenever you walk toward her to pet her or talk to her, she cowers down to the ground.  I hate that.  But I’m hoping she’ll outgrow it eventually when she realizes we’re not going to hurt her. 

So that’s the scoop at my house.  Scoop?  Yes, that’s what I need…. a pooper scooper.