Since I've completed my catch up blog and tried to rush six months of my life into a rather small blog post, I'm now going to post about a dog that I found last May. I purposely didn't add him in my last post because I wanted to make a post all for him so that I could introduce him properly. By now, you may have heard about my nearly 9 year old minpin, Pebbles, and my 2 year old British Black Labrador, Lincoln. I have posted about them in the past right here: Pebbles and here: Lincoln. And if I sparked any interest in you at all and you have dug deeper into my past blog posts, you will find that I have expressed that I am an animal lover and would one day love to dedicate my life to saving and helping animals here: I heart animals!.
Now onto Rocky. May 15, 2013, started out like any other normal day. My alarm went off, I woke up, woke the kids up, got everyone ready to bring Hailee to school, and out the door we went. On my way back from dropping Hailee off, I saw a dog on the main road outside of my neighborhood. He was trying to cross the road, but every time he tried a car would pass and he'd jump back on the grass. Of course, being the dog lover I am I felt compelled to do something to save this dog before I saw it get hit. So I turned into my neighborhood, rolled down my window and tried to get his attention. He looked at me and seemed interested, so I opened my passenger side door. He slowly crept up to my hand that I was holding out for him to smell. He took a few seconds to smell my hand and then he hopped right on in to my car. He was so cute the way he just sat in the seat, enjoying the nice cool air as we drove back to what would become his home, my home. I pulled into my driveway, pulled out my phone and called my husband(who was at home). He answered and I told him I had a dilemma, haha. Immediately he thought I had been in an accident, he told me this later. I continued and said that I picked up a dog, and the dog doesn't have a collar so I needed help getting him in the house. I could feel the lack of thrill over the phone about my dilemma, but out he came to inspect what I had picked up off the road and brought home.
I'm going to interrupt the story right here and be quite honest about the fact that my husband really wasn't surprised that I picked up a dog and brought it home. He knows how much I love animals, and knows that I have a big heart when it comes to them. While he sighed and didn't want to believe that I brought a dog home to add to our other two, he welcomed this sweet dog into our family because deep down he has a big heart for dogs, too. :) This is a guy who I expect not to be too thrilled externally when I get pets because each and every time I have brought a dog home, he isn't exactly jumping up and down. Take for example when I got Lincoln, our British Black Lab. Lincoln was just 8 weeks old when I got him. We had to do the whole puppy phase, and yes it was frustrating(you can see that I touched on this within past blogs), but Cody has always wanted a Labrador and I will admit the timing wasn't perfect because we were in England. And yes, it caused us many problems trying to get a military approved airline to fly us ALL back together. But, we made it all back together and I give Cody the most credit for being able to get Lincoln back to the states with us. Cody fought DAILY for weeks to make sure Lincoln came back with us. He sold his Camaro in England to get the $1000 it was going to cost us to bring Lincoln home. To say that Cody doesn't care about dogs would just be a big fat lie. :)
Back to Rocky, so we took him through the house to the backyard so that we could introduce him to Lincoln and Pebbles in an open environment. Lincoln was excited to meet Rocky, they ran and ran and ran all over the backyard. Pebbles didn't care too much about Rocky, but she would later take a big liking to him. She has a different relationship with Rocky than Lincoln does. She doesn't play with him but she is very caring towards him. Lincoln's relationship with Rocky is a very playful one. Lincoln is the baby of the three, that we know of, and he is the most playful. Rocky doesn't always want to play and the good thing is, is that Lincoln gets that. The first day went great, the second day Rocky escaped from our yard from a little hole in the back behind a tree that we were unaware of because our other two dogs have never tried to escape. I thought that was it, he was gone. But, my daughter was in hysterics by the time I came inside from the backyard, she had seen the escape! She was bawling, and I had to get her to school. I didn't know how I was going calm her down between then and dropping her off for school. A miracle happened, though. On our way to school, down the street there was Rocky. I opened the door to my car again(DEJA VU), and in jumps Rocky..like everything is just peachy! I was reminded of just the day before as he sat there enjoying the cool air once again. haha. He was soaking wet, by the way, in my brand new car. *sigh* I didn't allow fast food in my car, but hey, come on in little wet dirty dog! The things I do for animals! haha. Hailee was happy, BEYOND happy. She said to my statement of "Ugh, he's soaking wet and all over my seat", "WELL, at least we found him, mommy", how can I argue with that? A girl just like her momma. *beams*
When picking up a dog off the streets, you don't really know what you are getting. As far as you are concerned they don't have a name, they don't have an age, they don't have a back story, and heck, sometimes you don't even know what the heck kind of dog they are at all. So, we brought him to the vet. He wasn't mircrochipped, the vet said Rocky has Beagle in him, and that he is at least 3-4 years of age. We spent a couple months hanging flyers, reaching out to social media, and we informed the shelters. We still have yet to hear from anyone who knows "Rocky". We have had some people say that he looks like a dog a homeless guy had, I don't even know where to begin on that lead. Last month we took him to the vet because Rocky was acting very lethargic, and found out that he has heart worms. So, was he abandoned because of this? Was he homeless for a while? I don't know if we will ever know. At the very least, I would love to know what name he used to go by, but he has adjusted to the name Rocky well, so that's all I can ask for I guess.
Since we've had him for almost 4 months now, we have pretty much declared him as ours. He has been updated on his shots, and is under care for heart worms. He is already fixed, so we don't have to worry about that. The past few months have been an adjustment for him(as well as for us), but I really think he has accepted us as his family at this point. My closing thoughts for this blog post would be that going from 2 to three dogs was really overwhelming at first. However, I've always heard that going from 2-3 kids is the hardest but any after that isn't a big deal. I feel like that now with dogs. Will I become a dog lady? I don't know. I have browsed shelters looking for small breeds that have been in the shelter for too long and are walking the euthanasia danger line. I'm considering adding one more addition, an addition that really needs a home..will I?? I don't know, I guess time will only tell.
Take care!
Jaimee
