Is The Third Time A Charm?

Wil and I have wanted a dog for months! However, we haven't had the best luck with dogs...

We've even found a dog and brought it home - TWICE. But how many dogs reside in our house (or backyard) currently - ZERO. This is a post dedicated to the unluckiness we have had so far, and hoping that the third try for a dog is about to be the charm!

First, dog number one...we called him Buster (that is, we called him Buster for the less than 24 hours we owned him). Sydney Bosen named him for us...she and Kendall were spending the night the night we got him. We got Buster at the Humane Society.

We went to the Humane Society wanting a dog. We looked, and looked, and looked some more. When we were about to leave dogless, I walked by a cage and one of the dogs went running (well, as much as you can run in a Humane Society cage) to get his toy and came back squeaking it like crazy.

Dog #1: Buster

"This must be the one," I announced. So we took him out and played with him. He was a puppy - about 7 months old, but he was already big. We asked what kind of a dog he was and we were told he was a black lab mix. He was cheaper because he had been at the Humane Society so long...suspicious - we asked why a 7 month old puppy had been at the Humane Society so long. We were told people don't like black dogs, they think they look mean. OK, we don't have a problem with black dogs - we're good so far.

Also, some people think he looks like a pit bull and people don't want pit bulls - to which I responded, is he a pit bull (we had made the agreement that pit bulls freak me out and that we would not get a pit bull)? Well, there could be some pit bull in him or some boxer, it's really hard to tell but his tag says black lab, so he's mostly black lab. OK, we can live with that. We took him happily home, excited about the new addition to our family. We picked up Sydney and Kendall on our way home to spend the night and while I had fun painting with the girls and playing with our new puppy, Wil went to get dinner. That's when it happened - Buster growled and barked at me weird.

Wil and Buster

If you know me, you know I'm not scared of dogs. I've grown up around dogs, my aunt and uncle have big dogs and I've never been scared of them. But something in the way he barked/growled at me scared me - and I mean, I was afraid to be left alone in the house with him type of scared me. After that all I could see when I looked at him was pit bull ready to attack. So after discussing and feeling super guilty for returning a dog that we had had for less than a day for no apparent reason other than it scared me, we took Buster back to the Humane Society.

A couple of weeks later, we decided to try the pound. We fell in love with a small black lab puppy - he was adorable! As the pound worker pulled him out of his cage she said - "what a little bruiser." That's all it took - we had to have him and we HAD to name him Bruiser. He was all puppy - and young puppy at that! He would drive me crazy when Wil was at work - it was almost like having a child. Anytime I wasn't watching, he was peeing or chewing...but he was so cute, so it was alright.

Bruiser sleeping on my lap.

I took him on walks nearly every night - I thought they were long walks for a puppy, but we would walk into our house and he would go bounding across the room to pounce on his toys and chew and pee some more! One night I couldn't take it anymore so I took him on a LONG walk - and I kept walking and walking and walking until he finally laid down on the grass and wouldn't move. That's how I knew I could safely take him home.

Bruiser with my aunt and her neighbor's horse Goldie.

Unfortunately, this puppy came to us with parvo. He had lived with us less than a week when we first noticed the signs - but we didn't know what was wrong. We took him to the vet, but it would have been much to expensive to treat him, especially when they couldn't guarantee he would get better. We, and by we I mean Wil, took him back to the pound to have him put to sleep.

Ever since we've been bleaching everything - trying to get the parvo out of our house so we could try again.

We've been told by friends that we're just not meant to have a dog. One recommended downsizing to a gold fish and another recommended a child as an alternative. But our hearts really are set on a dog.

Yesterday, my uncle's co-worker brought a dog to work that he had found abandoned in the desert. It's part hounddog, part doberman. He's a super cute and well behaved dog - according to my uncle. My uncle even affectionately named the dog Elvis (ain't nothing but a hounddog, crying all the time) because its a hounddog. Wil is going to look at this dog tonight, to see if he's a keeper. And while he's looking, and I'm waiting for my visiting teachers to arrive, I thought I would write a post about our dogs.

The picture of Elvis my uncle sent yesterday to convince us we needed him!

If Wil decides Elvis is a keeper, I'll be sure to let you know...