The Legend of Zelda

Sucktober's not over yet, but something good has happened.

Remember Dexter, the little deaf 'difficult' dog we tried to adopt a while back? That attempt ended horribly. I'm not placing blame - the rescue group did all they could; we just entered the situation too late to save the dog.

Although I don't blame the rescue group, it was awful. But, we never really 100% stopped our search for a new dog. I've been trying to find a little rescue dog about Oliver's size - I want him to have a buddy. Mark, meanwhile, has been shrieking that we are not small dog people, and then smiling at every picture of every Chihuahua in need that I show him. We recently tried to find a new dog through some breed-specific small dog rescue groups. One of the groups was bad. Very bad. Extremely bad. They strung us along for more than a month and did some sneaky and hateful things to us. It ended with me sending them some nasty emails (not so effective) and then the Atlantic Regional Co-ordinator of that rescue group resigned her position in protest over how we were treated (a bit more effective).

The good thing was, I made some great local contacts in the small dog rescue community, and they've been throwing leads at me right and left.

The day before yesterday I received a short email from Lavender, a woman here in Nova Scotia who is deeply involved with small dog rescue. She said there was a Dachshund in need, and would we be interested in fostering? Now, I think Dachshunds are freakin' cool dogs. Mark also loves the breed, and Oliver the Min Pin has taken a shining to any Dachshund we've ever met on walks. They're normally about 25 pounds, which was bigger than I was looking for, but I absolutely couldn't resist.

I sent her an email, gushing about how cool Dachshunds are. I said we could definitely foster, and depending on what the dog was like, we'd be interested in adopting.

A rush of back-and-forth emails ensued, and it turned out that the dog was not yet in the care of any official rescue group, but was being cared for by a kind-hearted man named Angel, who had had her literally dumped on his doorstep after being told that the dog's family never wanted to see her again. There were also some veiled hints that if he didn't take her, she would be euthanized.

He didn't even know the dog's owners! It turns out they knew from seeing him out walking that Angel already had two Dachshunds, so apparently they reasoned that he wouldn't really notice if there was one extra.

The owner left, and our friend Angel reached for the little dog. She bit him and then ran and hid under a chair and stayed there until about 1:30 in the morning. Meanwhile, Angel had set up camp in the next room. He was dozing on his sofa but heard her start to move around in the dead of night. He walked into the sunroom where she had been hiding, sat down on the floor without turning any of the lights on, and stayed there.

After a while, he felt a wet nose bump into his arm. The dog retreated, returned, and bumped his arm again. He didn't move. A moment later she crept into his lap, put her front paws up on his chest, and gently licked his face.

That was three weeks ago. Since that time, Angel has become quite close to the scared little Dachshund. He knew he could not keep her himself though, and started to spread the word that he was looking for a good home for the damaged little girl with the rough past.

He spoke to a friend of Lavender, who emailed Lavender, who emailed us. She knew that we wanted to give an imperfect dog a second chance. I phoned Angel and we hit it off immediately. He lives five hours away from us on Prince Edward Island, and after a long phone conversation we had a plan set up to meet halfway. I was ecstatic - it turned out that the dog was a Miniature Dachshund, so she actually was very close to Oliver in size. Also, female, which we had a slight preference for, and young but not too young (puppies really don't thrill me).

So yesterday morning I threw Chani in the car with me and Oliver and we drove to the designated meeting spot three hours away. I was SURE something would go wrong. Angel wouldn't show. The dog would be unsuitable for our house in some way. Angel would decide he didn't like me.

No, no, and no.

He pulled into the parking lot and out hopped a beautiful, mottled-brown, long-haired Miniature Dachshund. She and Oliver made friends in almost no time as Angel and I talked. After about forty minutes, it was time to go. Angel handed the little dog's leash to me as he rooted in his truck for her bag of belongings.

When he turned back to me I could see that tears were welling in his eyes. I said "don't worry - we'll give her a really good home".

The little dog jumped against his legs and wagged her tail. He looked down at her and a tear rolled down his cheek. "I know."


Zelda is home now. We're working on gaining her trust and teaching her the household rules gently - she will never be hit in anger again.

It's been a huge week of ups and downs. I'm so happy to have Zelda home, but our friends Nay and Jay lost their dog Fritz today. They came over to be distracted from their sadness this evening, and I felt bad as they were gushing about Zelda. Their dog just died, and I didn't want to seem like I was showing my new dog off - it felt like rubbing salt in their wounds or something.


Sucktober's a rough month.

Any BC people reading this? We're coming to the island in a couple of weeks. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Just, y'know, makin sure that you read to the end of these posts. Heh.