Petfinder and I are BFFs

Since Finn got adopted a little over a month ago, I've been back in the swing of a regular ol' volunteer instead of the esteemed foster mom. Nothing wrong with that. It definitely means a lot more time out in the real world with a mix of dogs instead of cuddling with one very handsome little man.

The Animal Welfare Society had an event at Tractor Supply Company in Charles Town last month and I went along with 2 other volunteers and picked out the best of all of their, very not my style, t-shirts and tinkered with the toy tractors for 3 hours. Of course, we also told everyone that showed an interest about our 3 beautiful dogs, Xena, a pit bull, Carson, a hound pup, and Ozzie, some sort of collie mix they say. Here are a few snaps from the event, including the ride over with Xena snoozin in my car.

By the way, the only dog still for adoption of those three, is Xena, the pit-bull.

Then, last weekend, b/f and I went to the 9th annual Home for the Holidays event in Reston which is a HUGE adoption drive to, well, get dogs in homes in time for the holidays. There were tons of rescues with dogs of every shape and size and color. It was a lot of fun to see them all, but dang was the weather nasty. It was overcast and very windy...Hurricane Sandy was still sending her swirls above us. My favorite of all the dogs we saw was what the rescue called a Carolina Dog/Corgi Mix. Hunter

was so so so cute, but he was still under a year old and still needs lots of training and someone home most of the day according to the rescuers, so he's still in their procession. How freakin cute though? I've been having a hard time finding a new dog to foster. Frankly, I'm spoiled. Finn may not have been perfect by any means, but dag-on-it he was so stinkin cute. He new mom, Jess says he gets cuter every time she looks at him. I know exactly what she means. He was the perfect size, too. I loved picking him up and babying him, but at the same time, he was a sturdy little guy. Yeah, he was small enough to trip on, but chances are, you didn't hurt him. And chances are, unless you name is Emily or Jess, he's not gonna be close enough to trip you up anyway. I also miss my Andy. I dream of what it would be like having another dog like him and I just don't see him in the dogs that I meet. I know it takes time for a dog to adapt to changes and learn a routine, and heck, I got Andy when he was 12 weeks old so he grew up under my influence. I don't know what I need to be looking for in an adult dog to get somewhat similar results in my house. I guess I'm being too picky and I just need to go for it. I think I'll know when my help is truly needed and I'll bring another one to my half-way house. For now I'll just keep volunteering at adoption events, rabies clinics, and marching in a Christmas parade next month!

Oh, and I'm addicted to Petfinder again. I was for about a year before I had Finn. The 6 weeks I spent with him, my plate was full and I barely stepped foot on their website, if only to see if the humane society I rescued him from had removed him from their line-up and the shelter where I volunteer had added him. Now, I'm back in full-on addict mode. I browse most of the free minutes I have at work. Someone, somewhere is monitoring every step I take on my work computer, but seriously...you can't get mad over puppies and kittens. It's not like I'm on amazon and e-bay.

Anyway, I found this Andy doggelganger at a place in PA yesterday. Obviously, I went to meet her as soon as I possibly could, which was, ding-ding, today. She is around 6 years old and a large black dog in a sea of dogs that need homes so she doesn't have a huge chance of getting adopted. Luckily, Molly as she is called, has a great, lively, outgoing personality. We took her into a play room where she immediately sat on my lap when I posed cross-legged on the floor. She also chased a Kong around the room as it bounced unpredictably. When I realized how much energy she had stored up, I followed one of the volunteers out to the fenced play yard and got down to business with her. We ran around and played tug with a rope we found in the yard.

She was very stuck on the volunteer, who said that he feeds her, (so, duh, no wonder) and he also kept his hand on the door handle so she always thought we were about to go somewhere which kept her undivided attention. Regardless, I'm horribly spoiled and as soon as I met her, I knew she is not "the one". I still wanted to give her a shot and give her some love and we had a lot of fun playing together. I lead her back inside and she knew all the correct turns to make to get back to her kennel and gladly walked right in as soon as the gate was opened. She'll make a great pet for someone I'm sure. Obviously, the shelter is not a high kill shelter (or I'd be in the process of taking her in through AWS as a foster) and she'll have all of the time she needs for the right people to find her.

Whoops, I totally almost forgot to post the bread and butter of my day today, Pickle! lol. Pickle is a Chihuahua that was found as a stray and brought to the AWS recently. He's young, and a very typical specimen of a Chihuahua. He is shy at first, but picks a person and eventually gets protective of them. He was really into me after about an hour and would beg for me to pick him back up if I put him down. He'd get snappy if a bigger dog stepped on him and played my guard dog for the rest of the afternoon. Sorry for Pickle, the relationship was one-sided. I'm not a little dog person. At all. I want a dog-park dog! I joked that Harper would toss him around like a mouse! I will admit he was rather cute though, if you're into that sort of thing. He'll make someone a very loyal lap dog.

Holy crap, what a long day and what an enormous amount of dog hair I was covered in by the end.

If you miss Finn as much as I do, check out Jess's blog. It's awesome X's 1,000,000.
You'll find it in the right hand column under My Blog List.