Slice of Life Day 11: Rescue Dog

This is Aria, she’s a 5-ish year old rescue pitbull mix. And she’s absolutely loveable, cuddly, crazy, energetic and weird. Her gotcha story is probably a good place to start:

We started looking for a dog about 6 months after we bought a house (one of the main reasons for moving out of an apartment.) We found a beautiful white German Shepherd that we hoped to adopt, but found out was extremely needy for attention and really required a person to be at home almost always. And that would never have worked for us. So, we saw Aria at a local SPCA meet-and-greet at a local pet shop. She was calm, quiet, fairly well-mannered and obviously gorgeous.

So we spent the week talking about it, filling out the application and sending it over the SPCA. Our plan was to pick her up on Saturday. We get down to the SPCA fairly early on Saturday morning and the place is busy, so we go take a look at all the dogs in their pens, looking for Darla (her previous name)… And we couldn’t find her anywhere. So, when we finally, get the chance to speak with someone, they tell us that she was taken to another adoption agency about an hour away to hopefully get adopted more quickly. The staff had none of our paperwork and Darla had been picked up by the Humane League the evening before. The staff was awesome and was willing to call the Humane League and see what her status was.

Fifteen anxious minutes later, we find out that she’s being seen by a family. We ask to be notified if they decide not to adopt her and we head off to grab some lunch while we wait. We get a call just as we’re pulling into the parking lot, the family decided she wasn’t for them and we had until 5pm that day to go pick her. We ate a quick lunch and drove the hour to the Humane League to check her out. On the way we decided on a name – Aria, for Arya Stark a kick-butt girl and for opera arias combining our love of literature and music together. She was rambunctious – playing with toys and much more outgoing than the previous time we had seen her.

The group was awesome, letting us take her out into the parking lot and yard on a leash to see how she was. And thankfully, my partner knew just how much I wanted her and we took her home. Not knowing of her inability to climb stairs, her fear of anything on a long pole. We have no history of her, except that she was picked up by police as a stray.

And yet, she’s such a loving animal. She’s my shadow, following me around the house, making sure I’m always within sight. She doesn’t have an aggressive bone in her body, she sadly has no idea how to socialize with other dogs, but with her family she is relaxed and happy. She snuggles on the couch between us as we watch TV and grumbles anytime we have to move her. And even though she has gotten into a few things and caused some trouble, she’s overall an amazing animal and I’m so glad we brought her home (most days).

The Slice of Life Challenge is something new I’m trying this month! I’ll be posting brief posts that show a glimpse of my life in story-format. A slice of my life as a librarian and blogger that I hope you enjoy!