the dog days of summer

I hadn't realized how much I wanted a second dog until we started "casually" looking. Sarah is a wonderful dog and we love her very much, but she's definitely in her golden years and isn't much of a roust-about hound anymore. Rich and I went to the SPCA yesterday to browse for dogs. We thought we found a really nice dog named Hailey, who is clever and sweet. The SPCA has a checklist of things you have to cover before you can take the dog home. Much like my parents' lengthy rental applications, I know that every question on the SPCA's application is because they've been burned by that very situation.

I brought Sarah over to meet Hailey this afternoon for the required dog introduction before we could adopt her. Part of it is the setting there (really warm outdoors and fine gravel lot for dogs to romp), but Sarah was really stressed out about the whole thing. I knew this was a bad sign since she's normally a very low-stress dog, but Hailey wouldn't take a hint that Sarah didn't want to playplayplayplayplay and just wouldn't quit hassling her. The SPCA rep and I agreed that Hailey was too much puppy for our poor old dog and no amount of growling or snapping on Sarah's part would get her to stop.

It was disappointing to find a Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hound that we thought was so mild mannered and ended up being a butthead to our dog, but I'm glad we found out about it before we brought her home. I looked at another dog there that got along with Sarah much better but it still younger and energetic. We'll see how it plays out. I'm trying not to get too worked up and rush into a dog, but once I finally made the decision to expand our canine family the house seems very quiet without another pooch.

Sarah however is curled up on her dog bed completely wiped out from her big day of going for a ride and meeting new dogs.