I won the Dog Pound Lottery
Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2018 3:26 am
I've been keeping this as a secret from all of you for a couple of months. I figured Lizbit would spill the beans before I did. Okay, there was no actual lottery involved.
After Rusty died, life was too quiet. Finding another rescue greyhound became uncertain because of the closure of additional dog racetracks in Florida or elsewhere. Nobody knew how many dogs would become available or when or whether any of them would end up in Oklahoma rescue organizations. So, after scouring the internet, I suddenly spotted an "impossible" photo on the site of the local municipal animal shelter where I found Lizbit and Wiki, both of whom are wonderful canines in their own pointer-ish and border collie-ish ways, whatever the uncertainty of their breeding and previous lives might be.
The photo was "impossible" because the subject was a beautiful, young, male Weimaraner, and -- at least in my area and, I suspect, almost everywhere -- Weimaraners don't go to animal shelters. They just don't. They are sold for large sums of money or taken in by Weimaraner breed rescues who tend to adopt them out mostly (if not exclusively) to other Weimaraner owners.
I went to the pound "just to look." I know, I didn't need another dog, but I was curious. By luck or plan, the shelter employee who took me back to the dog lived on the same block as his previous owners, knew his back story and began by explaining his "deal-busters" (her words to discourage anyone who wasn't prepared to deal with his drawbacks.) She said he was an escape artist. "He can jump a four-foot fence and disappear before anybody knows he's gone. So, you can't just let him out in the back yard. You have to keep him on a leash whenever he goes outside. The dog-catcher has brought him in here before. His previous family finally decided they had to sign him over to us." I sensed that he may have been caught away from home several times in the past, possibly with increasing fines.
I was neither impressed nor discouraged. Little Wiki had leaped a four-foot fence when she was still a pup in order to sniff the fluffy backsides of Lizbit's next-door chicken friends, and she had recently jumped or climbed over a five-foot gate in a dog run. Keeping a dog on a leash for all outside activities is very much like dealing with a greyhound or a whippet, because if they do decide to run for any reason, there's no catching them until they're ready to be caught. I've had at least five sighthounds worth of experience with that sort of thing.
I looked at this dog, trying but failing to find anything wrong with him. I took him outside to a fenced area. He walked around for several minutes to find a 1-foot square of artificial turf, upon which he promptly pooped. I thought he wanted to prove to me that he was house-trained. I finally said the only words that seemed possible: "I would like to adopt this dog."
He had been neutered, given shots, and microchipped at the shelter. The adoption fee was less than the cost of the microchip alone from my regular vet. While I was writing a check, a young man came in to adopt "the Weimaraner" whose photo he'd seen on Facebook. He was crushed to learn that I'd already staked my claim. I felt bad for him, and I felt bad for the family who had to give him up, but I already was head over heels with this incredibly handsome fellow. What's a girl gonna do?
His name is Ramsay. I don't know if he was named that because he looks like Gordon Ramsay, if Gordon were much better looking, but the color of the chef's hair and the dog's fur is similar. Or, perhaps somebody thought they were naming him after an Egyptian pharaoh and got it a wee bit wrong. He's still Ramsay, and he's a love.
After Rusty died, life was too quiet. Finding another rescue greyhound became uncertain because of the closure of additional dog racetracks in Florida or elsewhere. Nobody knew how many dogs would become available or when or whether any of them would end up in Oklahoma rescue organizations. So, after scouring the internet, I suddenly spotted an "impossible" photo on the site of the local municipal animal shelter where I found Lizbit and Wiki, both of whom are wonderful canines in their own pointer-ish and border collie-ish ways, whatever the uncertainty of their breeding and previous lives might be.
The photo was "impossible" because the subject was a beautiful, young, male Weimaraner, and -- at least in my area and, I suspect, almost everywhere -- Weimaraners don't go to animal shelters. They just don't. They are sold for large sums of money or taken in by Weimaraner breed rescues who tend to adopt them out mostly (if not exclusively) to other Weimaraner owners.
I went to the pound "just to look." I know, I didn't need another dog, but I was curious. By luck or plan, the shelter employee who took me back to the dog lived on the same block as his previous owners, knew his back story and began by explaining his "deal-busters" (her words to discourage anyone who wasn't prepared to deal with his drawbacks.) She said he was an escape artist. "He can jump a four-foot fence and disappear before anybody knows he's gone. So, you can't just let him out in the back yard. You have to keep him on a leash whenever he goes outside. The dog-catcher has brought him in here before. His previous family finally decided they had to sign him over to us." I sensed that he may have been caught away from home several times in the past, possibly with increasing fines.
I was neither impressed nor discouraged. Little Wiki had leaped a four-foot fence when she was still a pup in order to sniff the fluffy backsides of Lizbit's next-door chicken friends, and she had recently jumped or climbed over a five-foot gate in a dog run. Keeping a dog on a leash for all outside activities is very much like dealing with a greyhound or a whippet, because if they do decide to run for any reason, there's no catching them until they're ready to be caught. I've had at least five sighthounds worth of experience with that sort of thing.
I looked at this dog, trying but failing to find anything wrong with him. I took him outside to a fenced area. He walked around for several minutes to find a 1-foot square of artificial turf, upon which he promptly pooped. I thought he wanted to prove to me that he was house-trained. I finally said the only words that seemed possible: "I would like to adopt this dog."
He had been neutered, given shots, and microchipped at the shelter. The adoption fee was less than the cost of the microchip alone from my regular vet. While I was writing a check, a young man came in to adopt "the Weimaraner" whose photo he'd seen on Facebook. He was crushed to learn that I'd already staked my claim. I felt bad for him, and I felt bad for the family who had to give him up, but I already was head over heels with this incredibly handsome fellow. What's a girl gonna do?
His name is Ramsay. I don't know if he was named that because he looks like Gordon Ramsay, if Gordon were much better looking, but the color of the chef's hair and the dog's fur is similar. Or, perhaps somebody thought they were naming him after an Egyptian pharaoh and got it a wee bit wrong. He's still Ramsay, and he's a love.
