The Conical Glass: The adoption saga comes to an end

Saturday, May 03, 2008

The adoption saga comes to an end

On Wednesday, I mentioned that the puppy was spending a few hours with some potential adopters. The good news is that they really liked him. The bad news is that they really, really, really liked him.

The Dad and his adorable young daughter returned Ace on Wednesday evening, around 9 PM. He had already submitted an application to the rescue organization, which would have to evaluate it and make the final decision. I tried to explain the process to him. Afterwards, I sent an email to the rescue group stating that they seemed like a perfectly nice family and I thought they would give the pup a good home.

Thursday morning, I got the following email from Dad: "I was wondering when we might hear from the rescue group. My kids are very excited about adopting Ace and we would like to bring him to our home as soon as we can." I responded that presumably, someone would contact him shortly, and mentioned that I had put in a good word for them. In the meantime, I had a tremendous amount of work to do so I kind of hoped myself that it would be sooner rather than later, since caring for the tiny pooping, eating and sniffing machine was a time consuming project.

Thursday afternoon, another email from Dad: "I hate to bother you, but I have still not heard from [rescue]. I'm actually confused... I would have thought that when you have a family ready to adopt one of your puppies, you'd want to jump on that and 'close the deal' so to speak. If for some reason she doesn't want us to have the pup then I'd appreciate her just telling us that we can tell the kids, but they're excited and its not really fair to keep them in suspense like this. Anyway, sorry for venting to you, but I'm a bit frustrated."

For any of you reading out there, here's a tip: adopting a puppy from a rescue organization is not the same thing as going to the store and buying a bag of oranges. It's analogous to adopting a baby -- anybody with functioning lady parts can make her own baby (with a cooperative gentleman involved, of course), but if you want to adopt or foster a child, you're stuck enduring home visits, interviews and reference-checking. Pretty much everyone involved is a volunteer, most of them with other jobs. It took about 2 weeks between the time I first saw Hobie and when I brought him home.

Anyway, I was dealing with about 10 other things that were stressing me out, and coping with a pushy puppy adopter was pushing me over the edge. I was caught in the middle. However, Joe and I determined that the family had to be the perfect match for Ace, since he was just as jumpy and impatient as they were.

Finally, late Friday afternoon, I got the word that they had been cleared to adopt Ace. They picked him up this morning. Incidentally, they are planning to rename him Scruffy, which is kind of cute and appropriate, I think.

One of my projects was attempting to house-train the pup, which I did with mixed success. He went about a week with no accidents in the house, always using the same part of the yard to do his business, so I slacked off a little bit in watching him like a hawk/keeping him confined to whatever room I was in at the time. Of course, then he had another accident, so I went back to monitoring his every step when he was indoors. This morning, we came downstairs to wait for Ace to be picked up and found the messy remains of an accident. I have no idea when he could have done it, since he slept in his crate all night and I thought I'd had my eye on him all day Friday. As Joe cleaned it up with a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle of orange-scented wood cleanser, I could only sigh fondly and think, He's someone else's problem now!

posted by 125records @ 6:52 PM

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