Well, we finally went and did it.
Meet Sherlock, the newest edition to our family. His story is a sad one. He was found as a stray and brought to animal control. He is an 8 month old boxer mix who is severely malnourished (he weighed in at 25 lbs. yesterday). Our vet thinks that his growth has likely been stunted due to the fact that he did not get enough food during the first 7 months of his life.
We have been thinking of adopting a second dog for a LONG time. On Wednesday we decided to visit Animal Control over lunch to "just look" and, of course, wound up falling for this little guy. Due to the fact that we both had to go back to work, we left without him and decided that if he was still available for adoption after Danny got off work, he would go get him. The whole situation nearly made me vomit on the way back to work. On the one hand, I felt awful watching the shelter worker putting him back in his crate, but, on the other, I knew that if we got him, Gracie’s life was going to change forever. Maybe I am a bit dramatic – but, not knowing how Gracie was going to react to a new brother stressed me out to the point where I got a splitting migraine.
So far, Gracie has proven to be a good big sister. Sherlock LOVES Gracie – he follows her everywhere and wants to play constantly. He refused food the first day and a half he was at our house, and, once he saw Gracie eating, he decided to give food a try. He nosed his way into her food dish and we held out breath, thinking that she would for sure snap and growl at hime. Gracie let him eat out of her bowl without any incident. What a sweet girl she is!
We are all looking forward to the long holiday weekend. Our routine is all over the place right now and, hopefully, we can find some sort of rhythm when we have a few days at home to work on training. I am also looking forward to catching up on some sleep. After averaging about 4 hours/night since Wednesday, my brain is not functioning at a high level.
I wish that we could have taken all of the dogs at Animal Control – but, I can safely say that two is my in-house limit. Merry Christmas Sherlock – welcome to our pack!
