Vague Wisdom

I haven't posted much lately. As you may know we had put Gilly to sleep a few weeks ago. I still hear her around the house. Sometimes it's the click clack of her nails on the hardwood floor. Sometimes it sounds like she's knocked something over or was in some other kind of mischief. As I called her to me, I realized she was gone of course. We are starting to look for another dog (maybe two) We'll never stop missing Gilly, but it's also hard to be home alone so much.

We have filled out a few intake forms for rescue organizations and we're keeping an eye out on virtual pets to see what's available at the local SPCA's and animal shelters. We got very close to adopting one puppy but then discovered that she was already taken. Looking at dogs is harder than I remember. As I'm deciding whether a dog will fit into our family I fall a little in love with each dog. So there are these micro-relationships beginning and ending in an afternoon.

We think we might like to get another Dobie. At least, we applied to the local Doberman Pinscher rescue. They don't really have a dog for us now, but we are in the queue. We also found a Doberman/Border Collie mix that looks very much like a Doberman. We also have the possibility of maybe adopting a Doberman puppy. A red Doberman had four puppies, one a black and tan looks just adorable. They all have ringworm and won't be eligible for adoption until that is cleared up. There seems to be some confusion on whether the shelter will adopt out the mother and her puppies or will they give them over to the Doberman Pinscher rescue. We will see.

We also applied to a couple other more general rescue organizations and the Northern California German Shepherd rescue. We have ruled out getting a Pitbull Terrier, a pit cross or Rottweiler. Liability issues are just to extreme even though some of the best dogs I've seen at various shelters are pit bulls and Rottweilers. I would prefer we stay away from hounds because they can be so loud. I am not a big fan of poodles or Chows. It's a prejudice on my part. I have no excuse. I'm sure that if the right Standard Poodle showed up we would take her or him. I doubt there is a Chow on the planet that I would adopt but who knows? Just so people know we are looking for a medium to large dog. Probably shorthaired, hopefully at least housebroken. Although the more training the dog has had the easier it will be for us. Along with Doberman Pinschers; German Shepherds, Labrador Retrievers, and Malinois are some of the breeds we've concidered.

Although, in principle, we would love to adopt an older unwanted dog. Losing Gilly has been a body blow and we just can't consider a dog that will die in the relatively near future. So we aren't really looking for a dog much over two years old. We think we worked things out so we can consider a puppy but that's not a particular preference. We anticipate some trouble housebreaking since I can't really handle a dog that hasn't had some training and neither can dbubley. That's what we are looking at so far

We had a guest at our place this week clever_doberman's Dobie Misha. Misha has visited a few times, so we knew she got along with Gilly. I was a little worried about being alone with the both of them all day. As with most dogs, that don't hang out with me, I'm pretty much a non-entity to Misha. I can't play with her. I can't pet her. I don't feed her, what good am I? So handling her if she misbehaved was a concern. dbubley helpfully took them both during the day and Carol and I got "the girls" in the evening. It was lots of fun having Misha around for an extended period of time. She seems to have figured out that I'm somebody to interact with. She gives me some good morning kisses in the morning. Gives my hand a quick hello lick when she's taking the house tour. I got her to give me a kiss on command and she sits for me. It was fun to see her sorta figure out, oh, he's people too and not just furniture.