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March 4, 2006
Cold Feet
I've been keeping my eye on petfinder.org for dogs that look like suitable candidates for adoption. The main criteria is young with no history of violence toward cats, or older with a documented history of living with cats. I've been trying to avoid breeds that the insurance folks are convinced are pure evil, and targeting mid to large dogs (no toy poodles or Mexican sewer rats, thank-you-very-much).
Despite living with dogs all her life (well, until we moved out, at any rate), Dawnise has never actually looked for one; like our three cats, they've all found her - so she finds the whole process sorta strange.
As perhaps I'm want to do, I've been analyzing the situation a fair bit. For example, having a dog up here is different than having a dog in S. California - for one thing, it's wet here, and for another it gets cold during the winter. That basically means that you can't assume the dog will live outdoors. That means we need to puppy/dog proof the house, and make sure that the dog and cats establish healthy boundaries and relationships.
For another, living in a more rural setting, on acreage as we do, makes "fencing in the yard" effectively impossible. So while we've thought about fencing in a portion of our space for a dog, I'd really prefer not to be the only neighbor with a fence. We've looked at Invisible Fence, and opinions are mixed. Most people (including the ASPCA) are ok with the basic idea (buried antenna wire, dog wears a collar that delivers a small "correction" - i.e. electric shock - as the dog approaches it's boundaries; installation includes dog training), though many point out that while it keeps your dog in, it doesn't keep other critters out, and that you have to tune the shock to the size of the dog, which means if you have two dogs of different sizes or ages, it's either too much or to little for one of them. None the less, I don't love the idea of affixing a shock-collar to the dog (reminds me to much of a movie plot).
Finally, in what's probably a case of cart-before-horse, we haven't landscaped around the house yet - meaning during the wet season (i.e. now) it's pretty muddy once you step off the patio/driveway in the front and off the deck in the back. That poses a problem for house-training - if we have to take the dog out to eliminate every hour, we're going to have little muddy paw prints all over the house.
All of those things sound like very rational reasons not to get a dog yet.
Trouble is that there are two puppies, both of whom look like good candidates, in a shelter in Port Angeles. They're siblings - lab/shepherd mixes from the same litter. She (Kayla) looks like mostly like a Shepherd, he (Luke) looks mostly like a Lab, and they're both terribly cute. They've also both already made one boomerang trip - he was returned after his adopted owner was in an accident and couldn't care for him, and she after someone decided that they were in over their heads and not ready for a puppy.
Puppies are typically adopted quickly, so when I found them last weekend, I figured they'd be plucked up before we could possibly go over and meet them today.
They weren't. I talked to the shelter last night, just before the closed, and they're both still there.
Crap.
Posted by dberger at March 4, 2006 8:11 AM
Comments
Also consider rescue centers. These are usually private individuals that rescue dogs and cats that are on their "last day". These critters are usually considered "very adoptable" and the rescue center wants to give them a second chance.
With respect to the yard, Heidi's folks have the same problem: One acre of orange trees and two dogs. The solution was putting up some 3ft. wire fencing that you could see through that covered a large enough area for the dogs to run around in. Because the fence is low and has a clear purpose, I don't think you'll be perceived as "the neighbor with the fence" but rather as "the neighbor that looks after his dogs."
-Steve
Posted by: Steve S. at March 4, 2006 9:40 AM