I have been living under a rock, a deep dark cavernous hole under a rock for what feels like years. Maybe it has been years, I don’t really know what happened I just shut down. I dropped my classes a semester away from my degree, I quit my job in the field I was going for my degree in, I got another job that I hated, quit that and then crawled into a hole and stayed there.
I stopped doing everything I loved to do. I stopped doodling, I stopped reading, I stopped riding my bike, I stopped living. I really don’t know how my husband lived with this shell of a person during that period of time. I was miserable, of course I was miserable before I shut down, during this period I guess I was just kind of there.
Here’s where things start to turn around. We have an elderly Rottweiler, named Kaiser, who is my world, my constant companion. Kaiser turned 10 years old this year. The average life expectancy for a Rottweiler is 10-12 years. I can’t let the last years of my baby’s life be filled by a human who isn’t there. A friend of mine told me that another dog in his life might extend his life span, it might re-energize him a little bit for a little longer. I got it into my head that we needed to add a member to our pack. Enter Cooper, 9 month old Pitbull mix (he looks mostly pitbull but we don’t know for sure because he’s a shelter dog).
I didn’t know anything about picking a new dog. Nothing. I’ve always just had dogs. As a child, we had several dogs, I don’t remember a time living at home where there were no dogs around. Our pack was large sometimes, 4-5 dogs and small others, with just 1, but we always had a four legged companion around. We had all types of dogs growing up, Grand Airedale Terrier, Golden Retrievers, Black Labs, an Alaskan Malamute, a crazy sheep dog mix all were excellent dogs, none of them were dogs I had chosen. They were family dogs, some of them picked us, like the Malamute who was dropped off at the top of our driveway by a stranger, I guess “Taking the dog to the country” was something they took rather literally and just left her there. Some of the dogs were my parent’s, like the Airedale and the Golden, and the rest were family dogs a part of the family. So you’re thinking to yourself now, but you said you have an elderly Rottweiler. I do, as a matter of fact have an elderly rottie living in my house. Funny thing about Mr. K, as we affectionately call him, he sort of came with an apartment we rented. The previous tenant, an Aunt of my husband’s, couldn’t take him on her move out of state, he was four years old and we all know how older dogs adopt, particularly large breed older dogs. I couldn’t let him go to a shelter so we kept him. So here I am an adult who has lived with dogs her entire life with no idea how to pick a new member of the pack.
During the discussion about adding a dog to the pack, we decided that we would adopt a dog, a young one but probably not a puppy, puppies have good shots at getting out of shetlers, older dogs not so much. We hit up petfinders.com and called the local shelters really having no idea what we were getting ourselves into. All of this ended up with us taking home 9 month old Cooper from the town animal control office, the day after another pitbull at the same shelter attacked one of the handlers. She warned “This is the same type of dog that did this to me” pointing at her bandaged arm, and I simply nodded, paid the adoption fee and walked Cooper to my car. Now, I realize looking back and knowing what I know today about selecting a new member of the pack I did all of this wrong, and if I were to select a new dog today I would probably not be sitting here today watching Cooper sleep in his open crate beside my desk, but I don’t think I made the wrong choice.
Cooper is a moderately high energy dog. He loves to run and play, he requires several walks a day and a lot of attention. Cooper’s energy level is probably a good deal higher than mine, but I want to be what he needs so I am making an effort to change. Currently, unemployed I have all the time in the world to make these changes for him and while making changes to my lifestyle to accommodate the needs of our new fur wrapped bundle of love I can see only positive things coming from this.