If you have me as a friend on Facebook then you already know that in the middle of June we got an awesome new dog --- and if you don’t have me as a friend, why not?!?! On Facebook I said there’s a story behind how we picked up Chewbacca (Chewie) and here it is…
Once upon a time (April 2014) in a land far, far away (okay, not so far away) I decided I was ready to bring home a new bundle of joy --- a puppy… While I’m okay with small dogs, my preference was to get a medium to large dog and there are so many dogs that need a good home I knew I wanted to rescue one, it’s the right thing to do… I started to browse various rescue sites and after looking at the different dogs that were listed I figured I either wanted a shepherd mix or a retriever, or something similar. Since I work from home a lot over summer I wanted to wait for summer to get a new puppy but I was browsing the sites anyway.
In early June I started to look with the intent of brining a dog home and the Sacramento Independent Animal Rescue Society (SIARS) had several puppies, plus they used to have a shepherd mix I was interested in but he had already been adopted a month ago. They have a great facility out there in Grass Valley, a large operation with good people. The puppies they had at the moment were either going to be on the small side or were too young for us to meet (but they invited us back the following week after the puppies had their shots). So we left excited that we’ll come back the following week, but also sad that we didn’t come home with a puppy.
A friend had shared an event that the Front Street Shelter was putting on and that led me to review their site of available dogs and they did have a shepherd mix puppy that looked cute. After leaving SIARS we went to downtown Sac to meet the dog; I even called them as we were driving down to verify the dog on the website was still up for adoption --- and he was. We arrived at the Front Street Shelter 10 minutes before they opened; we were the first in the door and went straight back to look at the puppy. He was still there!! We found his paperwork on his kennel and it said --- Adopted!! Damn! I was not happy, but I nicely went up to the front desk and verified the puppies status --- and sure enough the viewable status said Available but a new owner had already paid and the puppies actual status was adopted!
So I looked at Christian and said, “Sorry, bud, looks like we came all this way for nothing…” The staff at the shelter was great and asked what were we looking for, so I told them a shepherd mix puppy and they got excited as they explained they just had a shepherd mix puppy returned to them 30 minutes ago and the only reason the puppy was returned is the spouse was allergic to him. They went on to say how great a puppy he is and asked us if we wanted to meet him. Of course we did!! After spending 10 minutes with him, Christian and I both knew that was the puppy we wanted. It was meant to be.