Human: Anna
Canine: Oscar
Location: Frankfort, KY
Type: Mutt
Our Story:
After about 4 months of marriage I was driving my husband crazy about wanting a pet. I spend a lot of time at home, as I’m currently looking for work, and was feeling very lonely during the long days with my husband at the office.
Our landlord had said no pets were allowed, and I had resigned myself to that until one Saturday when my husband and I were working an event to raise money for local animal shelters.
Many of the shelters brought a few animals along to encourage adoption. We walked around looking at the dogs and commenting on how cute they were, but it wasn’t until we saw a little white fuzz ball that we thought about asking our landlord to reconsider the pet standard.
They were calling him Purdy. He was 10 months old, weighed only 8 lbs, had crazy wiry blonde hair and an underbite. He was the most adorable dog I’d ever seen.
The shelter representatives were very encouraging, handing us adoption forms and telling us all they knew about this little pup.
After clearing things with our landlord we decided to apply for adoption. Things were looking good. No one else had shown interest in him and his “adoption counselor” seemed to think we were a great fit…
Until everyone suddenly changed their minds.
I had had a very successful adoption interview, holding Purdy in my lap for an hour while the counselor and I talked about his history – he had been found on the street and had never had a home. He had separation anxiety and could be pretty destructive when left alone. He also didn’t like being crated. I told the counselor that these things were not a problem and that we were very interested in taking him home.
I thought all was well until I got a call the following day informing me that the shelter had decided that Purdy was “not the dog for us.” I was heartbroken! We had made so many plans already to bring this pup home and were ready to make him a part of family when he was suddenly snatched away!
We spent the next several days in a fierce battle with the shelter, including a phone call from a worker who had taken him home for a night and claimed he had torn down her drapes and pulled everything off of her dinning room table. I was losing faith. This was not at all a description of the dog I had met and I wasn’t sure that I was up for such a challenge. But my husband insisted that we were making the right choice and finally, on Halloween day, we brought Purdy home.
We promptly changed his name to Oscar (much more manly) and began getting him accustomed to the new house rules. He wasn’t house trained so that’s been an adventure, but as for his destructive behavior…since his time with us, Oscar has hardly so much as chewed the corner of a photo album.
He’s extremely loyal and incredibly cuddly and he might be the smartest dog I’ve ever met. We love every minute with our little Oscar (who doesn’t even recognize the name Purdy anymore) and we are so glad we were able to get him out of the shelter and into a loving him when it seemed all odds were against him.
