A New Addition to the Family?

The other day a friend of mine forwarded an email from one of her friends about finding their dog a new home.  It seems that her friends are expecting their third child very soon, and are having difficulty dealing with their very active hound mix, Pete.  As the owner of an incredibly hyper dog, I can certainly sympathize, and stories like this break my heart.  I would be devastated if I had to give up my Maggie,  but I do worry about what will happen when we have kids.  Despite all of this, I saw the picture of Pete and I felt like we had to do something.  He just looked so sweet, and has a face similar to Maggie’s.  The description of Pete reminded me so much of Maggie’s behavior.  I felt that if anyone should welcome Pete into their home, it should be someone who knows how what to expect from an overly excitable dog.

I certainly had anxieties, and made it clear to Pete’s current parents that we would have to make sure that he and Maggie get along (she is very particular about other dogs), and that my husband is not allergic to him.  Maggie’s long hair doesn’t bother him, but short-hair dogs can bother him.  I also keep imagining two Maggies tearing through the house and barking at people walking on the street in front of the house.

This afternoon we left the house at 3:30 to go pick Maggie up from the kennel.  It’s over thirty minutes to the kennel, and then we were going straight to Pete’s house – clear on the other side of town.  She’s always a bit worked up when we pick her up.   I was hoping exhaustion would overcome her before we got there.  No such luck.  She was pacing back and forth in the back seat and leaping at every car we passed.  We arrived at Pete’s house and Maggie bounded out of the car, having no idea what she was in for.  As we walked up the driveway and introduced ourselves to Pete’s mom, we could see him leaping up so that his head and the majority of his body were visible in the door.  Yep, just like Maggie.

We got into the backyard, and Maggie did her typical growl when Pete tried to sniff her.  As soon as I got her off the leash, they circled each other, did some barking, and then started chasing each other.  It was awesome!  Pete is super fast, and they were tearing all around the yard, flipping up snow in their wake.  Amazingly, they never knocked down either of the two little boys.  Maggie was surprisingly gentle with both of them.  Pete was so sweet and friendly.  They played together for about over 45 minutes and we asked all of the questions we could think of.  We decided the next step would be to have some extended time with Pete – perhaps this coming weekend.  There’s no other way to know if Pete will really fit into our family unless he spends a few days with us.

I still am a bit apprehensive.  I am not certain that my husband is 100% sure about even doing the weekend visit, although I keep asking him and he says he’s OK with it.  I wonder if I’m insane even thinking about getting a second dog that is too much for a family with small kids to handle when we are planning on having kids in the next year or so.  I am trying to convince myself that we will be able to spend more time with him, spend more time exercising him (he could become my running buddy), etc. etc.  I also wonder if that is incredibly naive of me.  I guess we’ll see how next weekend goes.  Wish us luck!