"Just Looking"

We're dog people in my house.  Hubs grew up with several of the four-footed furries around and since we've been together, we've always had at least one of them, each of them adopted as a puppy. 

Shadow, our eldest fur-baby, will be fourteen years old this December.  A Cocker Spaniel/Border Collie, Shadow wouldn't even stay in the same room I was in for months after we first brought our Ms. Girl home.   She has always made it clear this was her house, we were merely her people.  Probably simply because she herself lacks thumbs and thus the ability to open cheese wrappers.

Jake was our second fur-baby.  A Golden Retriever/Yellow Lab, Jake was my Valentine's Day present to Hubs in 1999.  He quickly became Shadow's favorite toy and everyone's favorite cuddler.  He and Ms. Girl were inseperable - over half of her pictures, from newborn through elementary school, have a blonde dog grinning at the camera in them. 

Cleo, our third fur-baby, adopted us just a few months before Li'l Dude was born.  She parked herself on our front porch and gazed through the screen door, eye-to-eye with the then toddler Ms. Girl, and refused to go on her way.  Unable to find anyone to take her in and completely unable to send her to the shelter, we took the brown puppy with the big feet in to the vet for a clean bill of health, then brought her home.   With her black-lined eyes and general body build and coloring, she appears to be of German Shepherd descent, but her fluffy coat and black tongue also point to a bit of Chow as well.  

July 11, 2008,  we lost Jake to hemangiosarcoma.   Everyone has missed him - furry people and us tailless ones as well.  The blonde furball who couldn't say no to a tennis ball left an enormous hole in our little world.  We heard a lot of recommendations to get a replacement puppy right away but we didn't.  We couldn't.  We weren't ready. 

Then, a couple weeks ago, my hubs mentioned something about maybe bringing home a puppy around the beginning of the year. 

A couple days later, my Li'l Dude asked if we could look online at Petfinder to see what puppies were needing homes. 

So, it seemed we might be ready for a new fur-baby. 

That afternoon, I watched our 9 yro Cleo try to play with Shadow - poor Shadow is mostly blind and mostly deaf and behaves like she doesn't always remember where she is or what's going on.  Cleo bounced around in front of Shadow, who stood there with a look of  "If I stand very still and very quiet, whatever this bouncy thing is in front of me will just go away."  Cleo did - go away.  Made me sad.  Made me think that, yeah, maybe a puppy...

As it turned out, last weekend Labapalooza was going on not far from us.  All kinds of rescued dogs ready and waiting to be adopted, with games and food and stuff to buy, and dogs and puppies and... yeah, we were so there.

With the intention of "just looking" or "maybe we'll be able decide on one breed over another or maybe just get some information on someone who might be ready to be adopted in a few months" we piled into my hub's Mustang, joined the masses clogging the highway Saturday morning, and headed for Labapalooza.  "Just looking."

Yeah, right. 

"Just looking" got to its feet and headed for the window when we saw the most sweet little black Lab puppy quietly sitting in a kennel with another puppy about the same size.

"Just looking" opened the window and put its foot on the sill when Vicki, a rescue volunteer, offered to let "Bear" out of his kennel so we could hold him.

"Just looking" flew right out the window and never looked back when "Bear" snuggled up under my hub's chin and whimpered and wriggled and gave puppy kisses all over my hub's neck.

"We're sold" I said to Vicki when "Bear" gave the same treatment to Li'l Dude, who burst into giggles and fell over.

Paper work filled out, adoption fees paid, promises made to let Vicki know how "Bear" was doing, and we were off, back into the car.  During the ride back home, "Bear" dozed off in my lap, leaving us to oooo and ahhh over his cute puppiness and to wonder at his story...

Some time around the middle of summer, a completely jet black Lab puppy, about three weeks old, was found in a paper bag in a Dumpster.  Alive.  Taken in and tended to by WAGS, "Bear" was bottle fed until he was able to eat solid food.

I have no idea how he was seen inside a paper bag, in a Dumpster - a tiny black puppy tossed out with the garbage - but I sure am glad someone else "just looked" when they did and started "Bear," now named Max, on his way to us.