They Call it Puppy Love

So in my last post I mentioned that I stopped at a Panera a few weeks ago.  What it didn't mention were the following facts:

• Panera is located directly next door to a Petsmart
• Petsmart doesn't have dogs at their locations
• We aren't going to get a dog until this summer
• Sometimes I go in there and look at dog items (even thought I don't have a dog) because I'm crazy

Well, two Saturday's ago I was having that crazy urge to go look at things that I can buy for my imaginary dog.  So, I begged my fiance to let us go in there and scope out items (to which he caved).

Upon walking in, I heard dogs barking and saw that they were having an adoption drive.  No big deal, we've handled walking away from plenty of these.  We scanned over the dogs, patted a few heads...and then we saw him. 

Ruh-Roh

We pet him for approximately 1.5 minutes, Adam commented about how mellow he was and was the kind of dog that we should get this summer...and then we both decided that we should leave immediately.  We got to the car, looked at each other, and asked the obvious question "are we going to get that dog?".  We both said "absolutely not" and "we're not ready for a dog" and "we don't even have anything for a dog" and "it's winter!".  Psssshhhh, that's crazy that we even thought that!?

Fast forward 24 hours.  All I can think about is that little dog so I google "petsmart adoption drive minneapolis".  The internet is a beautiful thing...I ended up being led to a shelter's site that had profiles for all of the pets at the drive...and there was his face again.

LD's little doe eyes (Little Dude, or LD, was his old name but that HAD to go for very obvious reasons) haunted my dreams, brought me to tears and I hoped for the next few days that somehow Adam would read my mind and pick up this dog and it would be waiting at home to greet me.  But he can't read minds and finally I let him know that I had been thinking about the dog all week. 

I thought for sure that he would give me the "no go" but when he saw his picture...it was puppy love.  But we realized that before being able to make any decisions we should see if he had been adopted.  I make the phone call and the consensus was that "there is an adoption paper out on him".  I could have cried; they told me that we would have to wait 24 hours to find out if it went through.  Our puppy (that isn't even ours yet), going to someone else's home.  I was heartbroken.

Then I get an email the next day letting me know that he has NOT been adopted and that we can come look at him if we would like.  Well, as my brother-in-law to be, Jay, said about the pup "get the jam cuz' I'm jelly".  After spending about and hour and a half with him at the shelter watching him get his butt kicked by a group of husky/lab puppies and being a complete gentleman with us, we signed the papers, cut the donation check and had a date last Friday to pick up our new family addition.

Our visit to the animal sanctuary

I'm not sure what we were thinking, but, we're not looking back!  We're one week into having Wallace and while this week has been extremely tiring waking up in the middle of the night and coming home when we would have been doing other things, little things like watching him pounce on a ball or sleep on our legs is worth all of the sacrifices.  We've learned so much about being a dog owner and about each other in the last week...and still so many more years of surprises, ripped up items, dumped over trash cans and more fun to come!

If you don't think our dog is the cutest puppy in the world, then you're wrong.  No arguing.  It's just that simple.

Also, while he's very cute...he's a lot of work so don't think that it's all unicorns and rainbows.  If you're thinking about getting a dog you REALLY need to do lots of research and save up a little doggy savings account.  With so many great sites online, I suggest spending lots of time looking up articles about the breed and about overall training in general before even thinking about getting a dog. 

I PROMISE that there are many more of these shots to come...

 

In closing, this last week and a half have been crazy.  Our schedules were completely altered, we've both made time sacrifices...and with those time sacrifices came bad some food decisions but also us running around so much that we didn't have much time to eat.  The good news is that we're getting the hang of things and I have started logging my food again as well as gotten over the guilt and went to work out after making sure that he's all taken care of.  All and all, Adam and I have both lost weight between then and now so we're still on the right track (even though the track has changed slightly since what it was two weeks ago)!