Sunday, January 07, 2007
There's a new addition to the Young family...
After months and months of looking for a dog we finally found one. Even before we left for San Jose we were planning on adopting another dog but it wasn't until we got down here that we knew about how much it was needed. Stella is a rescue dog. The way things work down here in the Bay Area is they essentially euthanize all dogs that are considered "dangerous breeds". Rottweillers, Pitbulls etc. There are so many people here that don't train their dogs or intentionally train them to be aggressive that they don't even bother with them anymore unless they are an adult dog who already has a really sweet temperament. If a litter of puppies is brought in and are from these breeds then they are killed. No trying to find adopting families at all. They are deemed too dangerous.
We've wanted a Rottie for a long time and were considering adopting one this whole time but it wasn't until we started visiting rescue websites that we really settled on it. The way this works is there are many people who run "puppy rescue" operations out of their homes and what they do is they beg the Humane society to contact them when they get puppies that will be euthanized and they will adopt all of them and then try and find homes for them.
This is how we got Stella.
Stella and her litter, seven puppies in all, were abandoned at about 4 weeks old. The Humane Society had no intention of calling anyone because they had received a ton of puppies and thought that there was no way they could find a puppy rescue that could take them. On the day Stella's litter came in Marilyn, who runs a puppy rescue out of her home, happened to be there and begged them to let her take the puppies. We actually contacted Marilyn when the puppies were 7 weeks old. She had found homes for all of the puppies except for one the night we called. We arranged to come out and meet the dog and see if she would be a good fit for us.
When we got there we met Stella and she was such a cutie. We ran her through a puppy test that tests many of the puppy's physical abilities as well as some of their temperament traits. The only part that worried me was that she would only crawl on her belly for the first couple minutes she met us. It looked like she was abused and left alone a lot when she was a really small puppy. The part that made us decide to adopt her was that she really, really desired to be around us. She loved to be hugged and hated being away from us.
We decided to adopt her and already she is doing awesome. She still has a lot of separation anxiety and she absolutely loves Luna. Luna thinks she's great too but sometimes just wants to nap and Stella can play all day long.
We'll post more later!
