Sunday, March 25, 2012

Dog update

© 2012 Joshua Stark

And it ain't good news.

After being told by the Golden Gate Springer Rescue (which I learned is just some woman's house that smells a lot like dog pee) lady that I could pick up the dog the day I showed up (after a 90 mile drive) if we were a good fit, I headed out with my baby boy to meet the dog.

Right as we were pulling up to the place, my wife calls me and says that the lady had changed her mind, and that two other families had called and would be looking at the dog the next day, and she would make her decision after two days.

Well, I was pretty crestfallen; I fully expected to be taking a dog home.  However, I didn't want her to think that it was the distance that mattered.  We still met her.

Big mistake.  She was a wonderful dog, although the "rescue" lady obviously hadn't washed her or groomed her, and she scratched with fleas (the lady apologized and said that she would have to groom her for tomorrow's visits).  I won't go into specifics because I don't want to dwell on it, but the dog was really good. 

So I go home and wait and stress for the next two days.  Of course, the lady never calls, so finally I call her.  She apologizes for not calling and says that the dog helped her make a decision for another family, (could it be that it was because she was clean and comfortable when she met them?).

So I'm pretty devastated.  I put myself out there with some hope, and got myself fairly crushed. 

Now I'm left with a conundrum:  I now cannot stand "rescue" people, yet I feel kinda bad looking for a dog from a breeder (nor can I afford hardly any of them).  Pound dogs are hard, unless I want an "American Staffordshire terrier" or other pit bull.  I don't. 

It looks like I'll be quite a while without a dog.

3 comments:

Hippo said...

man, that's a real bummer.

I seem to inherit my dogs. I gave up with Alsations because they kept being stolen.

I was then given a runt of a dog which I didn't bother giving a name because I thoought she would go the same way so she now responds to the name Dog.

Then Dominic rescued a puppy from my neighbour's Python cage and that ended up being called Dinge, which is German for Thingy.

Now another dog, also lovely, has adopted me and it is called Three, as in dog number three.

Josh said...

I caught fleeting glimpses of your dogs on the video of your place a while back. I believe you said you have podengos?

Alas, for better and for worse, we don't have dogs running around anymore, though when I was a kid strays were a common sight. That's just about all I've had for a dog.

In my opinion, it sounds like you've got just about the perfect pack.

Gary Maglipay said...

I feel you..
It was a really frustrating or disappointing to experience something like that. Something with humiliation too, i guess. An almost same thing happened with us last year. We were told that there are lots of dogs in a shelter somewhere(though it's not as far as you travelled) in our community. We go to check and found a havanese and a pomeranian. Well, they're mixes but you can easily say that it's their breed because of some strong characteristics.
We ask the other guy if we can have the pom but told us that someone called and asked already for a pom.
Goodness! can you believe that? Just because they called earlier, they will get the dog? or there's money thing involve?
We're there and decided to give a dog a home but because of some caller we can't? Something fishy..
I guess they should clean up the pond.