We Can Has Doggle

I have been a bad blogger lately, as always, but there's something worth throwing a few words onto the internet about.

We've adopted a dog! A little over a week ago, we took a trip out to the North Shore Animal League America and adopted a very mixed breed dog who we've named Wedge after the legendary starfighter pilot from the Battle of Yavin (and the X-Wing series of books that I loved in my teens). It only took us eight hours after the staff lost our application for a while and left us sitting in the dog meeting area hungry and uncertain.

Wedge came from a pupply mill, which means he was probably brought up in a situation where he was kept in a cage all the time and probably wasn't treated like he was a sentient being all that often. If you look around online, you'll find that adopting a mill dog can mean signing yourself up for a fair bit of doggy rehab (figuratively speaking).

For the first week we had him, Wedge was afraid of just about anything at just about any time. You couldn't even give him a treat, half the time! He would walk up to take it and then it was as if the realization of how close he'd come to me hit him about two feet out from my hand. Then he'd turn so fast that his butt and head were going different directions for a moment. It was cute and sad all at the same time!

I'd never really expected to get a dog - the one we had growing up didn't like to do much but steal food and be ornery - so I wasn't really looking for another dog experience. After our trip to Portland, OR, though (which I'm now realizing I didn't write about here! More soon!), we were left with feelings about things that were missing from our lives. Things like really good coffee, vegan donuts, and maybe having a cute dog to stop us from being all depressive a lot of the time (therapist recommended!). Naturally we picked a dog with it's own emotional problem.

Now, Wedge is calming down and doesn't run away from me when I move around the rooms of our tiny apartment anymore. I haven't really had to train a dog before, though I grew up with one, so this is a bit of a challenge. Hopefully, he'll come out of his shell in the next few months and we can take him camping over the summer.