SO BAD!
I wanted a puppy obsessively.
I don't know WHY.
It's not a PRACTICAL thing, to want a puppy.
I assume it's the same for women who want babies.
For me, the closest I get to wanting a baby is wanting to hold someone else's baby, and then it cries and I give it back to it's parent, then I go about enjoying my baby-free life of sleeping all day and eating junk food, while playing video games.
But a puppy!
That is something I WANTED with completely irrational desire. Being the animal lover in general that I am, I see hundreds of dogs on facebook that need homes. Having "liked" every shelter, rescue and animal advocator page all across the country, and even some international ones, I'm constantly bombarded with pictures of puppies and dogs, from the adorable and happy, to the sad and abused, and even sometimes the ugly (but still cute) and happy. As somewhat of a compromise, boyfriend says "Well, maybe you can foster a puppy for some rescue." with the casual dismissal of "that's not REALLY going to happen lol".
Well, a year of this goes by and I'm starting to get PISSED that we don't have a puppy. I knew he wasn't serious about the foster thing and hadn't really tried too hard to go that route. "We have a puppy!" he says, "We have Ophelia and she's the best dog ever!". I concur, Ophelia is, and will probably remain until the end of time, the best dog ever. Some day there will be a wikipedia of "the best dog ever" and it will be all about my Ophelia and her awesomeness. Her silliness and calmness, and overall good nature, makes her the best dog ever. Even when she does something "bad" like hide my shoes, because she's mad I didn't take her with me when I went to the doctor or something. Doctors don't appreciate dogs in their offices, by the way. But just because she's the best dog ever doesn't mean she doesn't get bored and stare at me with eyes that say "Why are you on the computer, still? Can't we go outside? Or play fetch? I'm bored! Screw it I'm going back to sleep." This led me to the belief that she needed a playmate, and this fueled my desire for a puppy.
So right about the time I'm getting ready to pitch a serious fit and throw a chair through my boyfriend's window, possibly with him on said chair, I find on facebook a puppy that looks startlingly like Ophelia when she was a puppy, I would provide a picture, but I simply can't find one. She was in an "urgent" album at one of the Los Angeles area shelters on facebook. I, of course, am heartbroken at the idea of a puppy looking so much like MY BABY dying in a shelter, I wanted to drive down to LA right then and bring her home! I beg boyfriend who, of course, is like "No. We don't need another dog." etc etc. Well, it turns out that the weekend before the week the pup was to be put down, the shelter she was in took her and a bunch of other dogs to PetSmart for an adoption event, and she was adopted! YAY! Well, kind of....
Now, this has happened before, I find a puppy or dog online, and I'm like "WE MUST SAVE IT!!!", then, a home is actually found for it, and I'm happy, because the puppy or dog was saved, and I didn't have to do anything. I wanted a puppy but I was ok without one, right? So I would be happy when a dog or pup I had my eye on got adopted. This time was different, however. This time I was actually sort of upset that I wasn't the one to save her.
Some time passes, a month or two I think. In that time I advocate for many dogs and puppies, and other animals too, to be saved. One day, I stumble upon this:
Sooooo cute!
For comparison, here is Ophelia as a puppy:
Who's cuter? YOU CAN'T DECIDE CAN YOU?!
I, of course, melted immediately. "I MUST HAVE THIS PUPPY!" goes through my mind, as it had with the puppy months prior that found herself a home down in LA.
So I inquire, where is this puppy? She is in Chowchilla, CA, which is a decent distance from me, about a two and a half hour drive. Well, that's pretty far, but doable! For a while I was commuting for an hour, sometimes longer, to work everyday, so two and a half hours both ways should be doable once. This time, boyfriend says "Wow, that puppy IS really cute!" but again insists we don't need another dog. I'm informed that this puppy is going to be headed to a high-kill shelter in Madera, CA, as this Chowchilla place is just a holding facility for lost and found animals, they keep them for a time in order for the owners to come find them, then they take them to the actual shelter nearest to them. This shelter is sadly high kill. Well, that sucks. The puppy's time at the lost and found facility ended up getting extended, as something happened, I can't remember what, and the transport that was supposed to happen that week, ended up getting canceled. I had an extra week to find this puppy a home or a rescue! I get to work, I find a rescue in Livermore I can't remember the name of now, and then I find another one in Palo Alto, Pound Puppy Rescue. I remembered this particular rescue, as I'd seen their page and website before, and thought that they seemed pretty awesome. I was rather impressed with their standards for adoption, they seem particular on who takes their babies and that is something I can only emphatically approve of. So, while I post, and re-post, this picture of the little black and white puppy in Chowchilla, I end up posting her pic to the Pound Puppy Rescue page, and the Livermore rescue page. Then, I remember what boyfriend had said in the past, "Well, maybe you can foster a puppy for some rescue."
I knew what to do!
In those posts I'd made on the rescue's facebook pages, I added a comment at the bottom, saying, "I can foster if needed!"
THAT got me a response from Pound Puppy Rescue! They replied saying that they know someone at the Chowchilla facility, and I should go to their page, fill out a foster application, and they'll talk to the people at Chowchilla!
WHOO!
So I fill out the app, and we start communicating through email with someone at the Chowchilla place, then a few days later, I'm meeting a transport in Pleasanton, and I'm on my way home with this puppy.
There's a little puppy in my car, with her little foot on my leg! SQUEE!
During this entire time, boyfriend was VERY busy at work. I think he worked 24 hours straight one day, it was pretty rough. So I'm explaining to him what's going on the entire time through phone calls, IMs and texts, how we might foster this puppy...how we ARE fostering this puppy.
"We'll just foster her until a good home is found for her", I said.
"You wouldn't want her to be killed, just because she is black, right?!"
Of course he didn't.
"We'll just foster her until a good home is found for her", I said.
"You wouldn't want her to be killed, just because she is black, right?!"
Of course he didn't.
So when he came home that Saturday from work, there's a puppy to greet him in addition to our Ophelia! Surprise! Well, it wasn't actually a surprise, he did know about her. I pretty much obsessively only talked about this puppy for an entire week.
I finally had my puppy! But for how long? This was only a foster thing, we weren't keeping her forever, just until a suitable home was found. Right?
