I’ve been given the green light to get a dog. This is huge. Epic, even. My family has had me on a dog diet for the past several years. Ever since I got involved with a dog rescue organization and we ended up living with seven dogs.
They were big dogs, too, of all shapes and sizes and their combined woofie weight totaled a whopping 460 pounds. Because I am not a dog snob, my house was like a dog U.N. featuring mixed breeds and most breeds. But here’s the thing: These dogs came to me or sorta crossed my path. I rarely went looking for dogs. Mind you, this is an important point when you’re defending your reasons for taking in a new dog.
In theory, “she just showed up in our yard” or “he was running around in front of my car” sounds better than “I was out looking for dogs today and found this one.”
Anyway, Buffett, the pit bull … err Staffordshire terrier, was about six weeks old when I came across him in the parking lot of a church on Election Day. Toby was dumped by people who saw our horse property and decided this would be a good place to rehome him. Mr. Whiskers was running scared down our street. He’d gotten out of his yard and his owners saw us take him in and, like Pontius Pilate, washed their hands of the situation. And so forth, and so on.
Our marriage vows were “for better or for worse” but it wasn’t clear to Glenn, at the time, that the better was “having dogs” and the worse was “having more dogs.” In fact, he unwittingly got the ball rolling when he said “sure” to us getting our first two Shepherd-Husky sisters. Then came Mr. Whiskers, a me-me-me terrier, who was still very much a puppy.
The deal was that we would give Mr. Whiskers a home until we could find him his own, permanent home. But this dog had a personality that was second to none and after five minutes of being around him I couldn’t bear to part with him.
I dutifully put a “well-behaved, house-broken, lovable puppy” ad in my company Trading Post. Then I called a friend and asked her to respond to the ad for me. She called Glenn to say she knew of someone interested in the dog and arranged a time and date to come to the house.
At the appointed time, I rang the doorbell and Glenn answered. He saw me and thought I’d forgotten my housekeys. Then he heard me say “I’m here about your ad for the dog” and realized he’d been had. So, Mr. Whiskers joined the party.
Our dogs have a home for life, or in dog-rescue vernacular “a fur-ever” home. So, after the Shepherd-Husky sisters had lived out their long furry lives and gone to doggie heaven (if you doubt where dogs go when they die, you haven’t seen the kids’ movie “All Dogs Go To Heaven” as many times as I have and trust me when I say that Charlie B. Barkin’, voiced by Burt Reynolds, will make you a believer), Sydney, a young, gorgeous AKC German Shepherd, came to live with us. Her owner was getting rid of her because she had no idea Sydney would get so big. Uh, yeah, how did that happen? Everyone knows that German Shepherds are small-breed dogs.
Soon, my daughter wanted her Very Own Dog, and Tillie, from an Aussie Shepherd rescue, was folded into the herd. And then there was Hank, the Chocolate Lab, who needed a home after his friend-of-a-friend owner died.
In 2008, the housing bubble burst and people abandoned their homes and their dogs. I started fostering for the Lost Our Home Pet Rescue and ended up driving 71 miles to Wittman, Arizona, to get two German Shepherds who has been left to die in the backyard when their owners packed up and left.
They were good-looking young brothers. I named them Ben and Jerry, for no other reason than that ice cream is an important part of my food pyramid. Ben and Jerry were healthy and lovable, but they were hard to place because of their size and also because left-behind dogs were flooding the market.
Ben and Jerry also had a bad habit of climbing over the chain-link fence around our property and running hither and thither. They came by this unfortunate behavior honestly, however. I was told that the only thing that had saved their lives was that they’d somehow been able to get out of their yard. Neighbors had fed and watered them until they were rescued.
By now, if you’re keeping count, you know we had seven dogs. (Buffett, Sydney, Tillie, Hank, Toby, Ben and Jerry.) We live in Maricopa County, and according to ARS 11-1001 we were keeping, harboring and maintaining more than five dogs, which qualified us to be a kennel.
Despite their different breeds and very different personalities, everyone got along and I guess they took a vote and made me leader of the pack because everywhere I went I had a comet-tail of dogs following behind. Glenn would be looking for me and as soon as he turned a corner and saw the first nose or tail he knew he had found me. (Evidence of this is in the picture above where I’m on the couch reading a book, which is code for fast asleep, with my trusty steeds deployed around me.)
One evening Glenn came home while I was making dinner. The dogs were sprawled all over the kitchen and Glenn began enthusiastically pointing at a spot on the floor. “Look!” he said, “We can get another dog!”
I looked at him like he’d lost his mind, “What? Why?”
“Because I can see the tile. See, there’s still room for another dog.”
Irony? Sarcasm?
Eventually I found homes for Toby, Ben and Jerry and lost Sydney, Buffett and Tillie to old age. Hank is still around and he has a buddy, Nixon, a fellow-Chocolate Lab named for the watch brand not the impeached president. Nixon got loose in our neighborhood and his owner was going through a rough patch and didn’t have time for him, so … yeah. He’s our boy now.
Which brings us back to the fact that by some miracle the dog-ban has been lifted. There are scores of rescues and shelters in my area, all with websites. Sending me to look for a dog is like telling Kim Kardashian to go shopping for shoes. Scary. Epic.
Wish me luck.
The Upstory 