 Jen and I
wanted a dog and now was the time to get one. Yeah, there are a lot
of details I'm leaving out, but they're mostly mundane family
planning type things. Jen wanted a German Shepherd, but I
wanted a Rotweiller. Luckily niether of us wanted a pure bred,
so the obvious choice was a Shepherd/Roty mix. We did some research
on the breeds and decided it would be a perfect mix - possibly
pretty too. We also decided we wanted a female - easier to train and
hopefully easier with future critters (i.e. kids). With the hard
part out of the way and me home from India we began our search on Petfinder. The first day of serious searching, we
found a litter at a shelter in Kingwood, West Virginia. The kicker was
one of them had the kennel name (temporary name to identify them)
India. We had to get her.
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Our adoption application was accepted and we
scheduled pickup for Sunday Oct. 28 at noon. At 7am we loaded up CJ
and ourselves and headed off. A shelter it was. One room held the
puppies, another the cats and kittens, an office, the incinerator
room, dog room and an office. They receive roughly 3500 animals a
year. Only 1/4 of them are
adopted.
Thinking back to India I was quite surprised by
this. In India there are stray dogs everywhere. There it's an animal
control issue across the culture and country as a whole. Here in the
States, we don't have too many stray dogs running around. We
have animal control sanctioned by our townships and local
governments. Here it's individuals not doing their part
to reduce the number of unwanted pets. The majority of these
animals come from people who cannot take care of them either by
not adequately training them or having them spayed or
neutored. It's just another one of things I can't quite grasp
between my two expierences.
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Wait for the filmstrip show.
If the filmstrip is too anoying
to read the text. click here.
The shelter bathed
her, we signed some papers, found out her
mom was the
Shepherd and her father the Rotweiller. How pure either of her parents were,
we don't know. We loaded her in the car and headed home. The
road off the interstate to Kingwood is a typical super twisty West
Virginia road - absolutely beautiful. It made both Jen and the
puppy nauscious. The puppy (we hadn't named her yet) was drooling like crazy.
We were afraid we had gotten more Rotweiller then we
barganed for, but when the road straightened out so did
the drooling. Driving home Jen had a crash course in fleas. She didn't realize
they could jump as far as they can.
She also learned how to properly kill them between her finger nails. She
was the flea assassin. We also narrowed down our name choices and finally
decided on Gretchen.
Want to start it again? Click here.
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Another filmstrip taken along the drive home.
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After the five hour drive, she was home.
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 She quickly became accustomed to her new
home.
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Though she looks unhappy, she's taken to the crate. It's the seperation part she's having problems with.
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We've resorted
to one of us sleeping next to her on the floor at night. It's
working well. Last night she went six hours before being
let out. Mostly it was because I had to use the
bathroom.
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Everybody keeps saying "she's gonna be big!",
but I heard that when I got CJ. He didn't turn out so big, so we'll
see what happens with
her. We're expecting anywhere between 60 and
100lbs. CJ's around 55lbs. It will be interesting if she gets
bigger then
that.
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CJ tolerates her pretty well. He may not be so
happy with me, but he's doing well with her. He doesn't like her to
nip at him or get too close, but will let her follow him around the
yard. It's cute watching her trail behind watching his every
move.
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The
cat is also tolerating Gretchen. Her curiosity brings her close
when Gretchen isn't paying attention. If Gretchen catches on
and moves toward the cat, the cat hisses and Gretchen backs
off. Pretty simple relationship. Hopefully it stays that way or at
least never gets worse.
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The
first two days were tough. I'm not sure if was excitement or what,
but she had ridiculous amounts of energy. We were walking her around
the park behind our house 4 times a day and playing with her to slow
her down. Fortunately she's calmed down quite a bit. Walking
around the yard a few times is enough to get her to sleep for an
hour or more.
I'd always
said I'd take off work at least a week if a I
got a new puppy. Finally I did. It was hard to concentrate on the
puppy, her house training and work all at the same time,
so I took off the rest of the week. It should do
wonders for our relationship, her training and my
sanity.
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