I guess I’ve managed to find something to spice things up a little bit around here, despite my complaint/lament a week and a half ago about how nothing ever happens to me.
After a couple of months of thinking, talking, discussing, researching, etc, I’ve decided that I want to get a dog. Not just any dog. I want to get an adult rescue dog — because I don’t feel comfortable buying a purebred puppy when there are so many dogs out there who need good homes. I almost don’t want to get a purebred at all, but one of my stipulations is that the dog is already at least mostly house-trained and has lived in a home before, so I’m going to go with one of LA’s many rescue agencies, which usually specialize in certain breeds. Most of the time rescue agencies are actually rescue networks, and keep their dogs in foster homes across the city/state/country, so their dogs come with a bit more of a personality profile — you’ll know how well they’re trained, what kind of bad habits they have, any medical issues, etc. It’s not a shot in the dark, like it is with a breeder’s puppy or a dog you find at the shelter. And right now, I need something that is a little more certain. Maybe someday, when I’m a lot better off, I can do what my parents have been doing for years — get the pet and then figure it out as they go along — but for now, I need just a little bit more surety.
Since I’m also looking for a fairly well-behaved, quiet and small-ish dog breed, I’ve chosen the Boston Terrier — after all, they are “America’s little gentlemen.” Plus, they’re freaking cute. And there’s a Boston Terrier rescue based in Los Angeles, near Long Beach.
When we got our apartment, the ad we found it in said pets were okay with a deposit, but when we signed our lease, the lady at the management company said that since we only had Sammie, and since he lived in a cage and can’t really get out and wreak havoc, we wouldn’t need to put down a deposit. However, if we decided to get something else, like a dog or a cat, we’d have to have that added to our lease and put down the deposit at that time. Derek and I talked about it at the time, and decided we’d wait a few months and get settled in before we made the plunge into “real” pet ownership. We predicted sometime early in 2009 we’d be ready, and that’s realistically when we’ll be getting our dog, it looks like. Rescue agencies’ processes are a lot longer than most breeders’ or shelters’, as they involve home checks and reference checks and the like — none of this ‘come in, see a dog, pay some money, leave with a dog’ kind of stuff. These dogs have had hard enough lives, they don’t need to be going to a home where they won’t be taken care of.
So we’re starting the process. The first step is to go and talk to the apartment’s management company, and put down our deposit. We had wanted to do this before Thanksgiving, but the lady at the management company asked us to wait until next week, since this is a shortened week and she’s mostly booked up. Then after that we can submit our application to the rescues — I’ve looked at a couple so far, one is ideal because it’s very close but the others are doable — and get that process started. I assume this is when the home check takes place — they’ll come by to take a look at our place and identify any issues that might eliminate any of their dogs, such as, for example, stairs might not work for a dog with joint or bone issues. Then they’ll try to match us up with the right dog for us, based on our application/questionnaire, and then contact us when/if they find one that works.
Hopefully it won’t be too long of a process, as I’d really like to get a dog relatively soon, but realistically we’re at least a month away, I think. Here’s to hoping it won’t be much longer than that!