And He Shall Be Levon....

So, I did something that I did not think I would ever do...In fact, something I pretty much swore I would never do...We got a dog.

  My Special Lady and I had always been on the same page about this, but recently there have been events that caused us to believe having a dog in the house would be a good thing. We started to quietly look into it, because we were not one hundred percent sure how the girls would feel about it, and we wanted as little whining or constant questions as possible.

  Then, out of the blue, the girls ask if we can get a dog for their birthday. This was a good sign( and it also gave us an opportunity to be SUPERFANTASTICBESTPARENTSEVER!! while doing something we were planning to do anyway- win/win).

  I'll spare all you the minute details, but my wife saw a dog on the humane society website that was 2 years old, and she liked the idea of a slightly older dog. I was not sold on it, but I didn't argue too much. We met Delilah on a Friday, and she came home with us.

  The big complication to getting a dog was our 17 1/2 year old cat, Fenwick. He is a great cat, not even slightly aggressive, so as long as we could get a dog that would leave him alone, we figured it would not be fine.Plus, they had tested Delilah with cats, and she seemed fine.

   Well, she wasn't. My wife had a couple of incidents between Delilah and Fenwick that indicated Delilah did not like Fenwick very much. We were contemplating what to do about it, when I decided that I needed to see how they would interact. we had Fenwick in the back room with a baby gate up. I went into the room with him, and My Special Lady brought Delilah up to the gate. Delilah saw him and stopped dead in her tracks, tensed up and STARED at Fenwick( "locked in" was a phrase they used at the Humane Society to describe what the do not want when a dog sees a cat...This felt like "LOCKED IN" to me). It definitely seemed like she saw a little grey fuzzy meal. We decided to bring her back.She will be a great dog for someone without cats.

  Then they told us a bout an 8 month old lab/retriever mix that might work for us. the lady who was fostering him offered to bring him over to the house so he could meet the kids and we could see what the cat and he thought of each other.

  She brought him over, and we all liked him pretty immediately. After he had been there a bit, we decided to bring out the cat. He sniffed at the cat, the cat hissed, but neither showed any aggression towards each other, so that was good. We slept on it, and decided that this was our dog. We had to wait a few days to complete the adoption from the Humane Society, but last Tuesday, we brought home Levon(The name has a combination of influences: the Elton John song, a tribute to great Band drummer/vocalist Levon Helm,and the fact that the dog's name was Levi, which we didn't love, and Levon would be an easy transition). here he is:

   He was born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas day.He shall be a good dog.

I have to admit, I have grown very fond of this dog much faster than I expected. He's a goofy, smiley little punk, and I'm glad he has joined our family.