I don't know what possessed me to take on another dog, especially considering how high maintenance Miss Puppy has been (see here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Good grief -- maybe I should reread my own blog once in a while). Yet, there we were, driving (well, I drove -- the kids rode, although Robespierre regularly extended a kind and thoughtful offer to take over, which I regularly refused) to the Ozarks to pick up a five-month old Tibetan Terrier rescue puppy.
I'd applied to rescue a TT in January but nothing came of it; I figured I'd adopt a dog while the kids were away at camp and I foolishly mistook being well-rested for invincibility.
But two weeks ago the TT rescue lady called to ask if I'd be interested in a puppy that had been saved from spending the rest of her life as an unhappy breeder in a puppy mill. The woman who had her buys as many dogs as she can afford at livestock auctions, takes them home, has them neutered, and posts them on Pet Finder. She sells them to loving homes for the cost of her expenses and spends the money she makes on buying and placing more at risk dogs. She also participates in tag-team style pet transports reminiscent of the Underground Railroad, by which adoptable dogs are relayed from driver to driver in a cross-country journey to their new homes. The day I spoke with her she had 18 dogs at her house, waiting to be adopted or shipped to new families.
How could I say no?
(By the way -- do you know Pet Finder? It's "the temporary home of 276,190 adoptable pets from 12,545 adoption groups." Included in their inventory are:
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- More than 19,000 Labs
- More than 11,000 Pit Bulls
- Exactly 11 Portuguese Water Dogs, but you can be sure that number will increase.
- Five Otterhounds, four Sealyham Terriers, three Sloughis, two Sussex Spaniels, and one South Russian Ovtcharka.)
So Saturday we dropped Miss Puppy off at the kennel, loaded up the truck and moved to Beverleeee car with snacks, drinks and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on CD, and drove. We drove on the freeway. We drove on two lane highways. We drove on gravel roads. We drove through villages, university towns and farmland. We drove through Bush land and McCain land, but precious little Obama land as far as I could tell.
(And you know what we saw on nearly every corner? Dead armadillos. Must've seen nearly 50 dead armadillos, not to mention dead cats, dead dogs, dead skunks, dead raccoons, and one very large dead deer. I began to consider that maybe if we'd left earlier we could have just picked up a couple of pet armadillos in the early morning hours before they got smushed by pickup trucks, but we'd already bought puppy chow and I'm not sure if Purina even makes armadillo chow.)
After four hours of driving, snacking, listening, and stopping for potty breaks, we arrived at Betty Goldstein's house, introduced ourselves to Betty and the Little Miss, wrote a check (that was my job), loaded ourselves back into the car, and headed home, with Little Miss snoozing on a towel the entire way.
Adjustment?
- No accidents so far.
- The pups have become quite attached to each other already.
- Little Miss is beginning to get over her skittishness with people.
- Yesterday she played with a dog toy for probably the first time in her life.
Welcome Home, Poppy!
