It’s A Dog’s Life – Mine, At Least For Now

by John Weckerle

Our readers may have noticed a brief hiatus since last Saturday.  On that sunny and hot day, we chose to visit what we thought was a food festival at the Triangle Grocery – but which turned out to be a small arts and crafts fair.  We understand that there was some food inside – but we never really got the chance to sample the food or look over the arts and crafts.  My wife spotted the Animal Humane folks at the east edge of the parking lot, and suggested that we stop there first.  We’ve been talking about getting a dog for about a year, and nearly adopted one a couple of months ago (at the last minute, the current owners decided to keep her).  We looked over the occupants of the big RV in which they transport the dogs, and visited with one or two outside before hunger overcame the other folks in the group, and we needed to pop over to the Greenside Cafe for lunch (I had the Funky, a vegetarian sandwich that changes periodically – this time, an excellent portabella mushroom sandwich).  As we started in that direction, my wife noticed a puppy that we hadn’t seen.  He was an eight-week-old Chihuahua/heeler cross and very friendly, so we discussed it over lunch, went back, and adopted him.

We hadn’t really been planning on adopting a puppy, but we are having a great deal of fun.  Even the house training is kind of an adventure – each success is pretty rewarding for everybody involved.  It is, however, time consuming, and has taken up a little of the time I usually set aside for writing.  He’ll be house trained soon, and the articles will increase in frequency.

One disappointment – I called the Town of Edgewood, and found that they have discontinued their dog training classes.  We’ll be checking with Animal Humane to see what they have available; alternatively, I suppose we could enroll in Petsmart’s classes.  If any of our readers know of something of good quality available locally, we’d love to hear about it.

5 Responses “It’s A Dog’s Life – Mine, At Least For Now”

  1. Chuck Ring says:

    Good for you and Lucy. But, I want pics.

  2. Karen says:

    I have a nephew I didn’t know about? Your neice will not be happy he wasn’t announced! I adopted her in Jersey City and was involved in some fund raising for the shelter. There’s a website called ZooToo.com that has reviews…products as well as services. Maybe you can find something there.

    By the way…never heard of a heeler so you’ve made me curious.

    Bring on the pics. You’ve had a few days already!

    Love ya!

    kp

    • John Weckerle says:

      Hey! Heelers are a cross between an Australian cattle dog and an Australian shepherd. They’re not as big as you might think. We were surprised yesterday when we took him in for his mandatory post-adoption checkup and the vet said he’d probably be “forty pounds or less.” He’s about 9 weeks now and already over 10 pounds now, so we’re thinking he may get to be about the size of a Jack Russell, give or take an inch here or there. We’re already getting close on the house training – we’ve been holding steady at 1 accident a day, usually near the door, and all but one has probably been “human error.”

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