Sometimes you need to ask yourself, What was I thinking? This is one of those times.
My husband and I own our own businesses — his is away from the house; mine is IN our house.
We have a dog — well, now we have TWO dogs.
Dog #1 is 10 1/2 and she’s an angel and we call her the lovely Ella Bella. We’ve had her since she was 10 weeks old, and she went through the usual puppy stuff. Today, she’s well behaved, totally housebroken, and causes virtually no trouble. She doesn’t like other dogs — except the one we lost two years ago who was related to her and who incidentally, didn’t like her much. But she adjusted pretty well to being an only dog.
Then, there’s me… I love having two dogs.
So, we — well I — had been talking about a second dog for a bunch of reasons, many of which seem vague, if not downright ridiculous right now.
My husband grew up with a Border Collie and always thought he’d want another. We joined a couple of FaceBook rescue groups and over the months, just watched what was going on. One group, Clancy’s Dream in Southern Indiana, had rescued more than 700 dogs in about a 10-year period and we thought, What a great organization.
Now if you break that down a little, you might ask yourself, why would over 700 Border Collies NEED rescuing? I didn’t ask that question.
Instead, I saw one who was about 6 and almost completely blind. I thought to myself, Our Girl Ella should be okay with that, and contacted the group. By the time we got a response, the blind dog had been adopted and I, in my infinite wisdom, said we’d really been hoping for a puppy.
That’s when the trouble began… they came back with the story of a 4-month-old male with one brown eye and one blue eye …and sent a photo. We swooned!
After filling out the obligatory paperwork and talking about this handsome boy for hours on end, we got into the car and drove seven hours, bringing Our Lovely Girl along.
We pulled into the driveway of the boy’s foster home, and when they brought him out and put him on the ground, he crawled into my husband’s lap. Yeah, we weren’t leaving without him.
We drove back home the next seven hours with him crying in his crate for a while and finally let both dogs out of the car and into our backyard. Lo and behold, Our Sweet Girl and our new boy (curiously enough, named Boomer) started running and playing and … well, we were beyond excited and shocked.
Fast forward to today – six months later. It’s been a journey of the most arduous kind with some great moments sprinkled in; just enough to keep us from taking him back.
First of all, it turns out Boomer’s NOT a Border Collie – he’s a herding dog alright – mostly Australian Shepherd with a bit of Border Collie thrown in, which means he’s about 15% BIGGER than a standard BC.
Boomer is strong-willed, smart as hell, somewhat destructive, an incessant barker, and a digger. Our backyard now looks like a mine field. On a positive note, he’s 100% housebroken and doesn’t destroy anything in the house when we leave him.
With patience — which wears thin on a daily basis — a trainer, online videos, more books than I can count, and an appointment to have him neutered in a couple of weeks, I am giving him, which really means I’m giving myself, the time and goal of being a better dog/person.
So, back to the title of this piece – What Was I Thinking?
I guess it’s like childbirth; you don’t remember how difficult it was and you do it again.
Hopefully, we end up with a great companion dog and will refer back to this piece again if my future self ever says… “Wouldn’t it be nice to have another puppy?”
