Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Am I NUTS?!?!?!?!?!?

Here I am, a woman in my late 30s raising 3 small children and here I am considering adopting a dog. Not just considering -- PLANNING on it. What am I, NUTS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Well, the answer to that has to be "Yes", but not exactly in a derogatory way. I've wanted a dog for much of my life, but have always had reasons to NOT get one. Now that I'm here, with a family, it's time for that plan to come to fruition. We've been talking about it off and on for probably close to a year now, but we keep coming up with reasons to not adopt a pet, the biggest one being can I handle the additional responsibility. Then we've had to consider potential allergy situations and fears (Kevin has a rather brutal history with a dog when he was only 5 years old that has created a lifelong fear of german shepherds).

We're talking about adding a member to our family. Everyone needs to LOVE this dog. So, we're proceeding slowly. I went to petfinder.com and sought out young labrador retriever rescue dogs and have applied to see several dogs to date. We now seem to have found a good match (on paper). So, the rescue organization is coming here for a home visit on Thursday evening to see if our home is suited for this dog and then we can arrange to meet her.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to proceed. If it were just me, it would be simple -- there would be no one else that I'd have to worry about. Any given dog would would work or not work, and I would work with the rescue organization to find the dog that works for me. But I have 4 other people to consider. And 2 of those are VERY unpredictable -- what will work today may or may not work tomorrow. We've taken a couple of trips to PetSmart down the street from us, hoping to find some dogs on leashes and exposing all 3 kids to them to see how they react. That has been relatively successful. I've also taken them to the groomers window to watch some of the dogs be groomed. They're all fascinated by what they see. What will happen when we take them to meet the dog that we're planning on bringing home? Well, time will tell....

But hopefully within the next couple of weeks, we'll meet our new dog and will be preparing to bring her home.....

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations and good luck! Just be aware the labs have puppy personalities for YEARS and are very highly energetic. I love them. They are one of my favorite breeds but lots of people are overwhelmed by the incredible amount of rambunctious one dog can hold...lol. I want a dog too but we aren't too that place yet. Chance refuses to grasp the concept of "gentle" and while we have a very tolerant cat I would hate to expose another pet to him.

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