Whew!

What an adventure the boys and I had today! Either that, or we just wasted five hours of our time, but I'd rather see it as an adventure. A learning experience. Whatever.

The animal shelter in Hillsboro has four dogs on their website that looked like they might work for us. I didn't want to drive all the way in there for nothing, so I tried calling them several times, left a message and a call back number, waited ... for three days. Finally I decided I was going to have to just take chance. I didn't particularly want to drive all over Timbuckto today, but I realized that a dog isn't just going to fall into our laps, that I'm going to have to do some (more) legwork to find the perfect fit for us. So I conjured up some enthusiasm, picked up the boys from school, and set off. An hour later (after only get turned around twice), we found the animal shelter, only to be told that all of the animals they had currently were displaying serious behavior issues and/or health problems. They suggested we try the Oregon Humane Society. I wanted to go home! But we'd come all that way, and the boys SO wanted to get a dog, and I figured, why not pop down the road a ways and see what they have? So we got back in the car and headed out. Somehow either the lady at the desk missed a step in her directions or I missed a step in my driving (most likely the latter), but somehow we ended up downtown Portland. At 5:00. With everybody and their uncle trying to just GET HOME. I drove round and round and finally proceeded out of the city (not that I had ANY idea where I was going, but OUT of the city was far preferable to IN the city, so ... out we went.) Finally I pulled over and called Becca, who looked up my location on MapQuest and gave me instructions on how to get where I was headed. Finally, after nearly 3 1/2 hours of driving, we pulled into the parking lot of the Oregon Humane Society.

Would you believe that out of about 100 dogs on site, not a single one was what we were looking for? Well, that's not quite true. There are a couple that they may suit our needs, but they haven't been checked out by the vet and the trainer yet so they can't be adopted (or even put on hold). All the others were either too big (lots of those), too old, too aggressive, too energetic... (We want energy, but when the sign on the kennel says, "This dog is very, very energetic," I tend to think ... maybe not! I was gazing affectionately at one little gal when I noticed the sign on her cage: "Returned for behavioral issues." Hm. Okay, moving on ...

We toured the entire facility twice, and I finally had to admit that they really have nothing currently available that would work for us. Alex burst into sobs and continued to have outburst of tears for a ways down the highway. Poor guy. He seemed slightly consoled by my promise to watch the humane society website like a hawk and call at the first sign of a suitable dog. I told him it's like Christmas, that we wait and dream and wait and wait ... and sometimes it seems like it'll NEVER get here! And then it does, and it's so worth the wait. I just hope "Santa" shows up soon!