So, yeah, we seem to have gotten ourselves a dog. It was a sneak attack – I went to pick up Fred at work, since his Jeep is in the shop, and he suggested that we "just go look" at the animal shelter, to which I agreed, with the idea firmly in mind that we’d be bringing no dogs home tonight.
You see how well that worked.
We went in and looked, and there were many 3 month black labs who had all come from the same place, where they were apparently being abused. There was an ultra-friendly guy who yipped and barked and jumped about like a mexican jumping bean. And then there was a dog they’d named "Prance":
She was very sweet and friendly, and took to me right away, jumping up to put her front paws on my chest to be petted. She’s not a large dog – I’d call her medium – and according to the guys at the shelter, she’s 7 months old and not likely to get any bigger.
Fred kept saying "Well? Well? What do you think?" Since our only point of contention in the dog discussion is that he thinks a dog would be fine living out back and I think that that’s cruel, I told him that if the guy answering questions agreed that it was fine to leave a dog outside all the time, I would agree as well.
Expecting, of course, that the guy would be all kinds of horrified at the thought of leaving a dog OUTSIDE.
Instead, when the question was posed to him, he looked at me as if I were perhaps mentally deficient.
"Well, yeah," he said. "She’s a DOG. As long as she has a doghouse and a pillow and plenty of attention, she’ll be fine."
Hmph.
She’s awfully sweet, though, and enjoyed running around the back yard and snacking on things the cats had left out there.
I’ve already had to put a moratorium on discussions of her eating any kind of poo, because Fred and the spud will just talk that sort of thing to death, especially at dinner.
According to the guys at the shelter – it was actually the Humane Society – she’s part shepherd, part lab, and may have some collie in her. When she gets to running (Fred was out throwing a ball around with her), she actually bounds, and it’s awfully cute.
Now she needs a name, which is where y’all come in. It’s got to be a name that starts with "s", since all the cats have names that start with s. Of course, if a non-s alternative is presented that is just perfect for her, we’d probably go with that – the "s" thing isn’t written in stone. So, send me your suggestions, would you?
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