the day the dog came home - part 2

Need to catch up on the story? Start Here.

When I left off we had decided that the Corgi option (at least from a breeder) was not going to work out. I started back up on searching for any puppy in the area on petfinder. One of the first puppies I saw was this cutie named Clyde.

Clyde is ¾ Shiba Inu and ¼ Rat Terrier, and both Mr. Y Not and I agreed on him! The next day I contacted this shelter to get more details. Surprise! Surprise! They emailed me back that very day. Thank goodness someone out there knows how to do business (the two breeders still have not gotten back to me and it's been over a week). However, it came with a bit of bad news. Another family was interested in Clyde and was having their home visit that day. With Mr. Y Not's approval I went ahead and filled out an application for adoption anyway. Crossing my fingers that this home visit went poorly and that we would have our chance. I got the message later in the day that the home visit had to be rescheduled.

While this was somewhat good news, I still went home a little down and started my search back up again. This other family had put in their application first and had to be given top priority. With a little more digging Mr. Y Not and I settled on a “Plan B” in Phineas here. I wanted to wait to hear the status of the home visit with the other family that was looking into Clyde before going ahead and filling out an application for Phineas.

I love that Phineas has eyebrows,
his fur is a different color where the eyebrows "should" be

My answer came the very next day when a lovely lady from Clyde's shelter let me know that they had received my application and wondering if I wanted to continue with the adoption process. WHAT?!? First I said “OF COURSE!”, but quickly followed that with, “what about the other family?” As it turns out, the way this particular shelter works is that while there can be several applications for one pet, the first person to have their home visit gets to decide whether they want to adopt. If not, they move on to the next application.

This was intriguing, but couldn't have come at a stranger time. Alright, to catch up, this conversation about continuing with the process happened on Wednesday, Clyde was set to get his lovely bits removed on Friday. If I wanted to schedule my home visit (and get that done before anyone else) I had two options. Thursday evening or Saturday morning. I wasn't available on Thursday because I was helping out my brother-in-law with their twins overnight.

That left Saturday. Funny story about this Saturday, it was also the day I was set to move in with Mr. Y Not. Wow, puppy home visit (Clyde would be coming too) AND a Uhaul all in one day? Gotta do what you gotta do. Mr. Y Not and I spent Friday evening cleaning up the house to prepare for the home visit. We also bought a few puppy items, but things that we could use with any puppy we got.

I had been a complete spaz since Wednesday. The woman from the shelter heavily implied that we would have a puppy on Saturday. She said that not many home visits are turned away, and once people see the puppy they can't say no. She even went as far to say that she is a pushover and as long as the home isn't dangerous, it will work out. WE'RE GETTING A PUPPY!!!!! I started counting down the hours until Clyde came to see us.

Saturday morning came around and I could not contain my excitement! I woke up randomly at 6:00 am and couldn't get back to sleep. Our home visit was scheduled for 10:00, only 4 more hours to go. At about 9:58 Mr. Y Not said he saw a different car in the driveway. That drove me crazy! It felt like she took ages to get out of the car and ring the doorbell. But she did, and she had Clyde cozied up in a crate. I wanted to see him so bad!

She took him out, let him play around, and commented how much she loved the house (and she had only seen the first floor, we do most of our living upstairs!). When we got upstairs she continued her admiration for the house after seeing a wall that is painted with a unique texture. Mr. Y Not calls it the suede wall because that's sort of the feel you get from it, and he went on to explain how it was done. Enough chit chat! She finally took out the paperwork, explained anything we needed to know about Clyde (meds since he just got neutered, type of food he's been eating, that he LOVES his crate...) and that was that!

WE HAVE A PUPPY!!!!!!!

Meet Clyde, now known as Chewie (or Chewbacca) :)

He is only 5 pounds right now!
I will get a photo with some perspective on his size later.

He has definitely been a joy so far, and I will have to dedicate a different post to everything we have learned about him, since this one has gotten quite long.