Page 129 of Eye of the Hurricane
“Hi! Are we looking to foster, adopt, or just browse today?” she asks.
“Hopefully adopt, if we find the right fit,” Katherine answers.
“Can you tell me what you’re looking for?”
“We’re thinking a puppy but open to adult dogs who can live with cats. I have a three-year-old black cat at home, her name is Bellatrix… I guess her name doesn’t matter,” Katherine laughs at herself before picking back up. “Anyways, I just love her and don’t want her to be scared or in danger in her own house.”
“Okay, we can look at some puppies and if no one feels like a great match, we’ll check out some of the others.”
“Sounds good,” I agree. Katherine and I follow her down the hall, past the cats and kittens. Then we reach the dogs, which is a much louder section.
“This is our puppy we’ve had the longest, still, she’s only been here a few weeks. Her name is Millie. She’s just under a year old.” She looks to be some kind of pit mix. She’s adorable.
“Can I ask why she’s been here the longest?” Katherine asks.
“She’s had some health issues, she’s had a couple of different types of worms,” the worker tells us. Katherine scrunches her nose up.
“I can’t bring worms home to Bellatrix,” she says. The worker nods her head and takes us to the next. Inside the cage is what I assume to be a shepherd mix.
The worker then goes on to tell us that she is bonded with another dog who is aggressive to all men. Maybe she could have led with that.
Dog by dog we go through and all have some major setback. Not that I think a dog has to be perfect to be deserving of a home, but when there is another animal involved, it makes it harder to take chances.
Even once we move on to the adult dogs, it’s one thing or another. It starts to feel like we’ve wasted several hours of our lives on this. That is—until we see a Siberian husky with one blue eye and one chocolate. Instead of the usual black and white coat, it’s got red and white.
“This is Rose. She’s nine years old, good with cats and kids, and healthy as a horse,” theworker tells us. I’m so in love with the dog immediately that I’m questioning why this wasn’t the first one introduced to us.
“What’s the catch? I mean why is she still here?” I ask, skepticism rearing its head. Probably because of the hundreds of others we’d looked at.
“Because she’s nine. She’s a senior dog. Because of the blue eye, she is likely to lose sight in it as she gets closer to the end. She could have five more years in her. We can’t guarantee that though. It could be one or two.”
I look to Katherine, trying to gauge where she is on it. She looks like the personification of the heart-eye emoji.
“What do you think, honey?” I ask.
“I think… If we got a puppy there would be no certainty that it wouldn’t get sick in the next year or two. I think she’s perfect.”
Her tail is going a mile a minute and she keeps biting at the air out of excitement.
“Can we meet her?” Katherine asks excitedly. I know without a doubt we’re going home with this dog by the way Katherine is looking at her.
“Of course, we’ll take her out to the yard,” the worker tells us. She opens the metal door on the cage and clips a leash onto her yellow collar.
She’s running around in circles as soon as we’re out in the yard. Every couple of laps is met with a million licks to our hands.
I sit down on a clean patch of grass and she climbs into my lap. Tail wagging and licking at my cheeks.
Katherine meets me on the ground. Rose is now frantically attempting to split her attention between the two of us. This might be the happiest dog I’ve ever met.
“I want to take her home, Kat,” I tell her.
“Me too,” she admits through giggles and attempts to avoid dog kisses on her face. She turns her head to face the worker. “Can sign the papers for her today?”
“We can go sign them now if you’d like.”
“Yes please.”
We take Rose back to her cage temporarily so we aren’t trying to fill out paperwork with a dog running between us. Paperwork surprisingly doesn’t take as long as I had anticipated.
