Day 1:Our new dog!

We decided to create a blog detailing our experiences with adopting a rescue dog, so that our friends and family can see her and her progress, and so that others contemplating rescuing a dog might possibly learn more about the experience and help in making that decision.

First, the story of how we found Maggie.

On Saturday, February 9th, 2008 we adopted our new family member, Maggie.

Over the past few months, Kat & I have been thinking about getting a dog and looking for the perfect pet. We looked both at breeders and several animal rescues. We preferred to adopt a pet from a shelter, but we primarily were finding larger dogs or breeds that we weren't interested in (Pit Bulls, German Shepherd's). With Kat's allergies, we wanted to find a pet that might be hypoallergenic, which led us to search for labradoodles, goldendoodles and cockapoos.

At one point over a month ago I stumbled upon 1-800-Save-a-pet.com. Their site lets you search animal shelters nationally for specific breeds and genders. It also lets you create an email alert to be notified when new animals are discovered matching your criteria. I set one up for female labradoodles within 250 miles of Chicago. Labradoodles in rescues are rare, so I didn't expect to get anything. Last week, I received an email about 4 new labradoodles about a 45 minute drive from our home.

The dogs were taken in by AEAR, Animal Education and Rescue, an Illinois not for profit rescue organization. We completed their application process, they checked our references, and we spoke on the phone for nearly 2 hours about the animals, our lifestyle and what we're looking for, and they answered our questions and concerns about the animals previous environment, temperment, etc. and adoption in general. We primarily wanted to find out if the dogs exhibited any signs of aggressiveness towards people, and while there are no guarantees, we wanted some sense of how dogs from their situation will readjust and live some semblance of a normal life.

I can't say enough about the volunteers with AEAR. Becky, Sandy, and Steph were awesome. We spoke with Becky at length Friday evening, and Sandy and Steph were onsite at the Animal Hospital when we visited. All were incredibly helpful, informative and let us work through our decision process with the various dogs with no pressure one way or the other.

We learned that the dogs were from a breeder mill in Wisconsin where about 50 dogs had been rescued. The dogs we were looking at had had several litters, had lived their entire lives in cages, were not housetrained and frankly had no experience interacting (positively) with people. The Fond du Lac Reporter has a story on this particular mill, and the sheriff who doesn't want to be bothered with enforcing the law.

We went to the Animal Hospital where the animals were being kept. They had just been spayed the day before and were then off to foster homes. Of the 4 labradoodles, 2 were very outgoing, but possibly a little too excitable for us. The other two were the most adorable, sad and scared animals we had ever set our eyes upon. They were given the names Jenna and Gem by the rescue volunteers.

Jenna was white in color, and the most scared of the two. She constantly was positioned behind Gem, and frequently shaking in fear. Gem was also terrified, but always stood between us and Jenna. Picking just one of these dogs was heartbreaking, as we wanted to make sure they both went to a good home, but after a lot of consideration we didn't feel we could take on two dogs at once - just getting one seemed like a big leap until we met these two dogs. We also thought - and hoped - that splitting up the dogs would, in the long run, benefit them (especially Jenna) to get them to stand on their own and break their codependence.

We decided on Gem. Living in the city, we thought Gem might have a better chance of acclimating to the variety of people and animals she'll encounter on the street. We also thought Jenna was so adorable, she probably wouldn't last long in the shelter.

Jenna is now in a foster home, and you can see other photos of her here.

The vet and AEAR estimated Gem's age around 2-4 years old, but no one is really certain.

We brought her home that day. She was completely docile in the car ride home, shaking the first 10-15 minutes and then calming down and just laying the back seat. I sat in the back with her while Kat drove. She absolutely refused to walk, and at this point we only had the free leash the vet gave us to hold on to her which was just a nylon rope through a loop. We carried her into the family room and I watched her while Kat went to several pet stores to buy them out of about every treat or toy you can imagine.

(Note: On Day 4 we finally decided on the name Maggie for Gem)

Maggie layed on the floor, scared and motionless for several hours. Finally, she decided to get up and explore the house. Pretty quickly I realized "explore" meant "find a place to pee". Fortunately, we just finished some home construction on the main floor, with some work still ongoing in the basement, so most of the paths in, out and through the house are covered in paper and cardboard. With no leash, and one person at home, it's very difficult to catch a dog (actually, I never did catch her, she finally just became bored and layed back down).

Kat arrived home with a new crate, gates, toys, treats and other necessities.

Maggie refused all food, including treats and cheese, all day. I've never seen a dog turn down cheese. But between her past life, being spayed the day before, and being relocated once again, this wasn't too surprising. She drank a little water, but not much. The entire day was basically her lying on the floor, looking very suspiciously at her new family and home. At this point we weren't sure how much of her lack of responsiveness was recovery from being spayed, adapting to a new home, or her past couple of years of mistreatment.

We tried walking her outside, but she didn't need to do anything since she'd had no food and almost no water. We took her to bed - her crate in our room. She easily went into the crate. Around 2am she was restless and we thought she might need to go out so we walked her again, but it was just a false alarm. Now she was wondering why her insane new family was walking her in the freezing cold in the middle of the night.

Photos: Maggie (aka Gem) protecting her sister, Jenna. These were taken at the Animal Hospital. Tell me these aren't the cutest two dogs you've ever seen.