Adopting a dog

Tom and I have been wanting to adopt a dog for ages - and when we finally moved into this house in Sunnyvale we were so excited to start looking for the right one. We did wait until after the holidays so we wouldn't have to worry about leaving it alone right after we adopted it, but as soon as we returned from our Christmas trip, it was dog-hunting time!

We had a surprisingly tough time finding the right dog - we knew we wanted a smallish dog that was friendly to everyone, mellow in the house, active out of the house, didn't bark much, and ideally wouldn't shed and could learn to chase a ball. Kind of a lot to ask for, but we were under the impression that the humane societies were so full that there would probably be many dogs like this to choose from.

Not so, in the bay area at least. It was pretty sad - the majority of the dogs in the shelters are pit bulls or pit mixes, and a lot of the other dogs had fairly major health or behavior issues. One 50 lb Airedale we looked at immediately jumped up on the banquet tables that were encircling the exam room and raced in circles around the room! Imagine having that dog at home during dinner time!

The small dogs that were available were often Jack Russell Terriers, which are renowned for their extremely high energy level and can be pretty destructive at home if they aren't getting enough exercise. They are also generally hyper and don't calm down very easily.

We mostly used Petfinder, a website clearinghouse that lists all the dogs available in the various rescues and humane societies nearby. You can search for a certain breed, or gender, or size, and read a description about the dog before you go meet it, which is very helpful.

At any rate, after 3 weeks of monitoring Petfinder and five visits to various pounds / humane societies / rescues, we finally saw this profile posted on the website. I was particularly excited because the dog really looked like a border terrier, a breed I had been reading about that fit all our "wish list" requirements. I had kind of resigned myself to not getting a BT, though, because they are relatively rare (143rd most popular breed registered by the AKC) and are also in that "small dog" category that tended to get adopted lightning fast from the shelters.

But luck was on our side, and we adopted the little tyke last weekend. We've named him Banjo.