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I haven’t blogged since Buddy died.  It’s taken a few weeks before I even felt like it, as I still miss him dearly.  Rich, however, has been pouring through images of dogs on Petfinder.com.  He found a dog that got his attention, and he wanted to meet him.  The problem was the dog was in West Virginia!  We decided to visit with him, but I made no promises.  It took us the entire day to drive there from NJ!  We learned he was in the shelter for over two years.  He was always passed over because of barking too much and appearing too aggressive. The people at the shelter recommended they take him out for us to meet rather than us going inside.

As soon as Rich met him, they went off for a walk.  I was told that he only had about a three minute walk a day, for over two years, and the people at the shelter were “amazed” he was walking so well with Rich.  I realized right then that the dog was coming home with us. The picture above is from him walking at one of the rest stops on the drive home.

We call him Budster, but sometimes Bullet because he is incredibly fast.  Despite us having a fenced in back yard, he managed to get out twice.  Once it took us nearly an hour to find him, and it scared us both.  Being outside must have been incredibly fun for him, and I suspect each time he ran past us he thought we were playing.

We since reinforced the entire bottom of our fence, which was no easy task.  I found this video — How to Dog Proof your Fence, which we found helpful.  We bought the supplies, although a bit more heavy duty, and Rich, my mom, Derry, and I worked on the fence for two days.  We also contacted a trainer, Sheri Venza who is the author of Calling All Canines.  She came to our home and gave us a couple hours of instruction.  In the coming weeks, we’ll be doing more with her.  She suggested a tether while in the backyard, so we are using it too.

We also took him to the vet for an ID chip, to get checked out, and so on.  We learned that he has several breeds in him.  Our vet thinks shepherd, rotty, chow, terrier, and Rhodesian ridgeback.  All can be aggressive, so it’s good that we are getting training for him/us.

He’s ranges from very cute to kind of creepy, and he has quite a bark.  He is responding to commands very well, stays off the furniture and bed, no longer jumps on us or anyone when we tell him not to (that was after some training), and  seems very eager to make us happy and be a “good boy.”  Even so, we’re going to continue working with Sheri as I want him to learn good habits with us.  I still miss Buddy tremendously, and thinking of how he died continues to hurt.  At times Budster/Bullet can look like Buddy from certain angles.  Then I see his face and am immediately reminded that he is not Buddy.

Otherwise, I’m back from Photoshop World and from seeing a fiber exhibit.  I have photos and stories from both which I’ll be posting about in the coming days.  The opening of Photoshop World was particularly fun because it was based on Project Runway, being called Project Photoshop, and it had a fashion show based on Photoshop tools.  More on that coming soon …

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 10th, 2011 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Misc. Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.