Dog Adoption, Part 1

It turns out that getting a dog is a lot more complicated than getting a cat. When I decided I wanted a cat two years ago, I had one pretty quickly. I went to the shelter and met a few and found one that I really liked. I picked him up the next day, once I'd bought some things like a litter box and food. I'd been thinking about it for a while at that point, but I essentially went from deciding to get a cat to owning a cat in less than 48 hours.

This is not how dog adoption works. Kevin and I had been talking about a dog for a while. At first I really wasn't on board with this idea. I got a cat because they're fairly independent. But a dog requires a lot more care. At that point, Kevin was spending more time on the road than at home and I wasn't eager to be saddled with the responsibility of an animal I wasn't sure I wanted.

But then we bought a house and he got a new job that keeps him closer to home and the idea of a dog started to get more exciting. So we started to really look into it.

Kevin had already decided that he wanted a German Shepherd, so we started looking online and found a rescue that specializes in German Shepherds. They were having an adoption day at a nearby PetCo, so we decided to go and meet some dogs.

Once there, we discovered that they really weren't willing to talk to us until we had filled out an application. An application that wanted more information than some apartments I've rented, including three references.

After we turned the form in, the waiting game began. They called our references who all confirmed that we weren't going to kill the dog. And then they forgot that they had called one of our references, which led to a weird back and forth between Kevin and the lady who was "organizing" all of this. We ended up having to provide an additional reference to placate her.

Next came the in-home interview in which someone came to make sure we lived in a dog friendly area and had some sense of what we were getting into. She was not impressed with our rather small back yard and we had to assure her that the massive park on the other side of the fence was dog friendly. We talked about morning and evening walks and signing up for a dog training class and the possibility of hiring a dog walker to come by every day since both of us work full time. We'll see how much of this actually comes to pass.

Having finally jumped through all of the hoops, we have now been approved to adopt a dog. The next step is attending one of their adoption days or possibly contacting the foster homes directly to meet some dogs we're interested in. Once we find one, the foster family will have to sign off on us as well. I'm not sure how long this part of the process will take. But we're one step closer to actually adopting a dog.