I’m super annoyed with this whole dog process. Allow me to vent for a bit. Our criteria isn’t much, just mid-sized, and good with cats and kids. And maybe not a puppy. In the past six weeks, that have felt like forever, I have been watching four different humane societies and countless (for my tired brain) rescue organizations. I’ve filled out four different applications, all of them extensive, and participated in home visits and phone interviews, and allowed vet and personal references checks as well. All this for a limited number of dogs that will fit with our family. On our way to up to meet Kane the other day I was telling Alan, I know that rescue is the way to go, but boy I can understand now why people just go to the pet store and buy a puppy. The whole thing could be done, easy peasy, in an hour! Of course, then you have a puppy. ;)

The rescue organizations are all volunteer and I know they try their best, but there really needs to be more corporate management in there! I end up talking to six different people, one for each step of the way. As of Sunday when we visited Kane there were three others we were hoping to see, and in the past two days they have been adopted or mysteriously unavailable. Then two more became available, then not available. The communication is poor in this organizations so one person says the dog is available and the next person says, oh, no, it’s not. This afternoon two remaining dogs fell through and we decided that was a good thing because Kane was a great dog and now we could got forward confidently with that decision.

Eve was in tears. She wanted a different dog, any different dog, for mysterious Eve reasons, and I spent half an hour with her this afternoon talking about Kane, waylaying her concerns (he would be too boring, being one of them) and getting her psyched up. She loved him when we met him, so these were more “I’m not getting my way” tears then true tears of concern. I called a rescue organization that was going to come by this evening for a home visit and canceled. They were being terrible communicators and their dogs, who we were excited to meet, seemed to be in vanishing. So we said Kane is our guy and let’s move on!

I had literally just hung up the phone with them and my phone beeped with a new email alert. “There was an incident with Kane and a student on Monday that made me think twice as to whether he would be a good candidate for a household with children. The student was down on the floor with him playing and getting him riled up and out of excitement he nipped her in the face. She didn’t get hurt, but after discussing it with the head technician, we decided that he would not be a good choice in a house with kids for this reason.” ARGH!! I mean, I’m glad they told me and of course I don’t want a dog who will nip people, but ARGH!!

Back to square one. Every dog we were interested in is either adopted, “not right for us”, or apparently dangerous.

Maybe it just isn’t meant to be at this point. Not like we don’t have other things going on in life. I closed all of my doggie websites that were open, closed the Amazon page with crates on it, closed the “how to introduce your cat to a dog” page, and will walk away for this evening. Deep breath. Fresh eyes tomorrow. It will be what it will be.

Maybe I should find out what my references are saying about me… ;)