I wasn’t ready for another dog. I’d been pretty attached to Lacey, a 40-pound terrier we had adopted after her career in the entertainment industry came to an abusive halt. Her former owner/trainer decided she was no longer of use, and a mutual friend wanted to find her a better home.
In the years we had Lacey, she went from being afraid of her own shadow – literally hiding in the back of the house – to being the best family dog and house protector that you could want, at a time when our kids were still young. When Lacey died in 2012, we were all pretty well devastated. And I wanted to wait a respectable amount of time before finding a new dog to restore our house to its usual staffing level of two dogs – a Primary Dog and a Backup Dog.
(I stole this “structure” from the famed humor columnist Dave Barry. Pretty sure my wife hates it ..
.) Ruby, the Shih Tzu who was just a few years old at the time, was the logical choice for the Backup Dog role. We needed a new dog to take the lead role.
But a couple months later, I wasn’t ready. Not enough time had passed, for me. The kids were ready, though.
So, they and Erin went to the Castaic Animal Shelter without me. They met several dogs. But the one who stole their hearts was a black Aussie shepherd (probably mixed with .
.. something), who, according to shelter staff, was “near the end of the line” because no one had really given him a second look since he’d been there.
Apparently, he literally only had a day or .