Happy Adoption Day to Me!!

Today is my Adoption Day. I've been with Mommy for nine years now. That isn't bad considering how I started in life. For those of you who tuned in late, I'll tell you about how Mommy and I found each other.

You see, back in the summer of 2000 Mommy's old dog Boo finally lost his battle with mouth cancer and somewhere in Wisconsin I was born. About five weeks later Mommy sent in applications to Labrador retriever rescue groups and around the same time somebody threw me over the fence of a rural Wisconsin kill pound in the middle of the night. Mommy said on her applications that she couldn't take a dog until February because she had a family reunion to attend and she had to buy all new furniture and repair her floors and walls. That was because mouth cancer causes a lot of bleeding and Boo had been allowed to have full run of the house while he was sick and he bled on EVERYTHING.

L.E.A.R.N. contacted Mommy and wanted to do a home visit a couple days before the floor guys were coming to refinish all the hardwood floors in the house. Every piece of furniture that could be salvaged was either in the basement or stuffed floor to ceiling in the kitchen. Mommy took the interview lady through the blood splattered living room and down to the basement where they sat on the slightly less blood splatted couch and talked. Mommy thinks that volunteer was very brave.

Mommy thought they would think she was nuts and not give her a dog, but, while they may have thought she was nuts they knew they could find a dog that was just as crazy as her, and that was ME! I've never been quite normal, but that is due to the fact that I grew up in what must have been the worst of the worst pounds. Hoses scared me, brooms scared me, barking dogs scared me. I didn't get any good human contact because I was destined to die after I'd been there for four months, but luckily for me L.E.A.R.N. was contacted right before I was to go to that final vet visit and they pulled me out of the pound.

Mommy was at the family reunion at the time I was rescued. Mommy's vacation lasted longer than my first foster home. I was there for only a few days when my foster mom called the people in charge of fosters and said that I was untrainable and someone needed to come get me THAT DAY or she would take me back to the pound herself. I got picked up a few hours later and was taken to my second foster home. That foster mom was a professional trainer and she checked me out and decided I could be trained, but I was going to need a very special forever home. She turned down one person who thought he might want me because she knew it wasn't the right fit (they wanted a dog who could be trained as a gun dog). The people who arranged the adoptions then went through all their applications and found Mommy's with its great big red SUCKER! stamped on it (this is Mommy's theory of what her application looked like). They called Mommy and said, "We know it is a month early, but we think we have the perfect dog for you! Would you please go look at him?" Mommy looked at the house and decided that she could delay repairing the kitchen an bathroom and said yes.

We met at my second foster home and I was super charming. I brought her all kinds of good things while she was talking to my foster mom, like the kid's toys and shoes and socks and a video tape and a remote control. Mommy fell in love right away and, even though she was a little concerned that I lost all interest in her when we took a "test walk" and she couldn't get me to look at her face no matter how many weird noises she made, she said she wanted me! The foster lady said she thought Mommy was a perfect fit for me too, but we had to wait 48 hours before the deal was set. It was a very long two days for both of us and then it extended into two weeks because my foster mom noticed I had an odd way of walking and wanted my hips x-rayed and Mommy said as long as I was going to be knocked out for that they might as well fix me then so she couldn't take me until I had mostly recovered from that. But finally she came to take me to my forever home.

I let her put my seat belt on without complaint and hopped right in the car without looking back. I knew I was going some place good. When we got on the highway I managed to tangle myself up in my seat belt so badly that I was stuck upside down dangling over the foot well of the car. Mommy had to pull onto the shoulder and untangle me and I helped by licking her face and wiggling the whole time. Then when we got home I went potty in the yard and she let me into the house where I immediately found the toy box and picked up every toy and ran one lap through the house with each one. When I had emptied the toy box I squatted down on the newly refinished living room's hardwood floor and peed about a gallon of pee in two seconds and Mommy saw just how charming I really was.

But despite everything Mommy kept me and so I got to celebrate my Adoption Day today with a new toy, a big bone and promises of chicken nuggets tonight.

Happy Adoption Day to Me!!