Introducing Alma!
October 30, 2011 13 Comments
This weekend, the Husband, Moses and I gathered up our passports (rabies vaccination certificate, in Moses’ case) and went on a little international road trip.
As you know, we have been contemplating, discussing, and researching a second dog for several months now.
We had decided we wanted to try for a purebred rescue, rather than put our name on a list with a breeder. That’s not to say our experience with getting Moses from a breeder was anything less than perfect – we just wanted to keep our eyes open for the opportunity to give an adoptable dog a home.
Then, on one of my near-daily PetFinder.com browses a couple of weeks ago, I came across this ad:
I showed the Husband the ad and we both instantly agreed we should get in contact with The Montana Companion Animal Network. It was late on a Sunday evening and I immediately fired off a brief introductory email expressing our interest.
The next morning, Winnie’s foster mom gave me a call to ask some questions and answer ours. And we her story.
‘Winnie’ was originally purchased as a puppy from a breeder in Montana. The family had a couple of other dogs, and when it came to Winnie, there was either a sense that she should figure things our herself or be trained by the family’s existing dogs. This, obviously, was hardly the case, and by the time she was 5 months old – large, untrained, and still a puppy – they had simply decided they didn’t want her anymore.
But instead of contacting the breeder, or surrendering her to the rescue then, what I assume was some sort of guilt or shame prevented them from giving her up. Instead, they kept her out in a pen in the back yard – hardly interacted with. She did not live in the house with everyone else. She did not get walked. She was not even fed regularly. For a year and a half. Reports are that they would tell other people that they “hate that dog”.
For that year and a half, the foster mom – who knew these people – tried to get them to surrender Winnie to the rescue so they could re-home her. The foster mom been fostering dogs for the MTCAN for several years, saw the problem, and wanted to help.
Finally, the family got fed up came to their senses and the foster mom arrived home to find a scrawny, stinky Winnie dropped off in her back yard; the search for a new home began.
Which is where we come in.
Two weeks, several emails, and lots of Google-mapping the state of Montana later, and we have arrived home with our much-awaited new dog!
Sticking with the historical-names theme in our household, we have changed her name to Alma, which is a short form for Amelia – as in Earhart.
And I must say, it hasn’t even been two days and she is settling in very well; we could not be happier that we’d chosen the adoption route and found her! She is awesome – and super cute – and it is extremely sad and angering to think she was “unwanted” – or even hated – by someone else.
Will her past experiences effect certain behaviours she’s learned or developed? Sure. But we’ll all work together to discover them and work through them.
Can we expect her to be just like Moses? Nope. But who knows – maybe we’ve got another Olympic Champ in training!
And Moses seems pretty stoked to have a little buddy, too!