Something new has come to our house. . . .

Steve & I have been back & forth about whether we were ready to bring another dog into our home since we so recently lost Bogart.

It has been tough on me, since I was Bogart's main caretaker, not to have a furbaby to touch, play with & cuddle.

We had both decided that we would prefer to get a rescued dog from either a rescue group or a shelter rather than try to find a reputable breeder (and neither of us would go to a pet store because we vehemently detest the puppy mill industry).

One of Steve's friends from work is married to the Director of People For Animals here in NJ and we have been checking out their website (http://members.petfinder.org/~NJ17/index1.htm) to see what dogs they had available for adoption.

While neither of us had a problem with getting a male dog, I had thought that getting a female this time might be easier to adjust to. Yeah, I'm probably just nuts but for me I thought it would be better. In addition, my mother does not like male dogs so it would be hard to have her watch a new dog in her house if it was another male.

Unfortunately the dogs that they currently have were a bit larger or smaller than what we were looking for.

So we then turned to Petfinder.org to see whether we could find a small-ish dog through another group. We also registered with Cairn Rescue and Westie Rescue.

Yesterday, I was scrolling through the Petfinder site & saw that there was a group by the name of Rawhide Rescue that seemed to do alot of work with rehabilitating and re-homing puppy mill survivors.

One of the entries that I showed Steve was for 2 female dogs that had to be adopted together as they were bonded since they had lived together.

We went. . . .TO LOOK. . . .now, first we got lost. The rescue group was showing their dogs at the Petsmart in Bridgewater, NJ. I thought I had a pretty good idea where the store was located & away we went. Unfortunately, the way the store listing in displayed there are different store names on either side of the sign. . .and the side that we approached the shopping center did not have Petsmart listed on it. . . .so we ended up going past the mall, and then almost into Pennsylvania because we could not find a quick "turn around" point, only to reverse our direction & find out that where we were was where we should have been!! (Try saying that 10 times fast!) LOL

All the while we are in the car I'm telling Steve, "we aren't going to take the first dog we see", "we are just looking", "we really don't have to rush into anything", etc., etc.

Do you see where this is going???

To make a long story shorter. . . .we walked around looking at the dogs (and trying to make sense of who was there to be adopted & who was there with their owners). There was an adorable little male that I originally thought was a dachshund mix, but now see, on Rawhide Rescue's website -- http://members.petfinder.com/~NJ235/index.htm
, that JarJar is a spaniel.

He was cute & wiggly but not what I/We were looking for.

Then we saw this little dog sitting underneath a volunteer's chair. . .and she looked pretty scared.

We were introduced to Eve, New Year's Eve, who is a Cockapoo (Cocker Spaniel, Poodle mix) they think. She was very sweet & laid back, but a bit skittish around men. They didn't have much information on her except to say that she had been found in Newark, NJ as a stray. She had been picked up and taken to the Newark Humane Society where she was given a rabies and distemper shot and bordetella vaccination. They think she is around 6 years old and aren't sure if she has been spayed yet.
She was taken out of the shelter by a Rawhide Rescue volunteer and was being fostered in a private home.

The volunteer that we had spoken to said that there was alot of interest in this little girl & if we thought we might be interested we should consider filling out an application.

Well, I'll cut to the chase. . . Eve is now known as Casey and she is home with us. Here are some pictures:

This first picture is from this morning. . .she crawled into our linen closet and is laying on our dirty laundry:


In this picture Steve is trying to see if she will take a treat. . . so far she hasn't eaten any of the dog cookies, jerky treats or other things we have tried to tempt her with:


I don't know how to put this picture in the correct direction. . .Casey is sitting on our back stoop:


She obviously wasn't a stray for very long because she is in pretty good shape; although I think she has a cold or something going on because we can't get her to eat & our vet will be meeting her tomorrow to try to find out what is going on.

She seems to be settling in here well, she's a bit skittish with Steve but I'm hoping that we won't have a long-term problem with that, and with each day all of us will get better used to the routines we have.

I still desperately miss my Bogart, but it is nice to have four new paws in the house.

BTW, the dogs that we originally went to see? Never saw them, so I don't know whether they had been there earlier or came in after we left. . . I didn't notice them on the groups website today so I'm thinking that they were adopted also, which makes me happy.

In peace and pieces,