The Elephant, Errrr, Dog in the Corner

Some of you may have seen the picture of me and a doggie on this here blog. And my various tweets about all of our doggie doings. And those of you with astute powers of observation and deduction (that would be all of you) probably put blog + twitter together and got OMGNEWDOG.

Well, sortof.

Kristian and I are having a trial run with a rescue doggie named Gracie. She’s 43 pounds of awesomeness in a Siberian Husky package. And I think that she’s pretty much melted both of our hearts. But, we’re approaching this slowly and cautiously, because getting a dog is a big responsibility and it would be a bad idea to just go, “CUTE! WANT!”

Which, let’s be honest here, is all sorts of tempting. I mean, her favorite thing in the world (that I can tell, so far) is to walk up to wherever I am sitting and nuzzle me with her nose.

Here are the various facts:

• Gracie is a two-time rescue dog. Her first set of adopted parents left her chained up in their backyard all the time, so she has some socialization issues. She didn’t get any exercise and she was left all by her lonesome the majority of the time. Luckily, she likes humans in all shapes and sizes. Unluckily, she hates other dogs with a fiery passion and will bark her little head off around other dogs. This is the biggest challenge with Gracie. If we end up adopting her, we’ll be working with a trainer to get her to stop being aggressive towards other dogs. It’s pretty embarrassing to be the girl at the farmers’ market whose dog is barking and lunging at everyone else’s dogs. We’re fairly confident that this is something that Gracie can get past.
• Gracie seems to have no interest in snapping at or chasing our cats. In fact, when Tabitha snuck into the room the other day (we’re trying to keep them separated for now), she tried to sniff T’s butt! Sophie stared Gracie down through the baby gate that we have up and G-Dog (Kristian’s nickname for her, one that I find hilarious) got down into a submissive position. So, I think that the cats will continue to rule the roost. Which suits them just fine.
• Surprisingly enough, Tabitha (who is the text-book definition of a scaredy-cat) is the one that has been the most bold about coming near Gracie and sneaking into the room to get a better look at her. This might render my clever plan to get her to warm up to Gracie fairly obsolete. My genius plan? Cover Gracie in Tabitha’s favorite thing in the entire world, yogurt. Sure, it would have been messy, but they would have become lifetime friends.
• Ok, so I was kidding about the yogurt. But I have been feeding Tabitha yogurt while petting her with a hand that I rubbed all over Gracie and got to smell like dog. Come to think of it, this might be where that boldness comes from. Sophie’s one true love is jumping on Tabitha’s head, so I don’t think that I can use her love to motivate her to tolerate the dog.
• I’ve already gone jogging with Gracie twice and I can say, with some authority, that if we keep this dog, I am going to get a whole lot faster. Either that or lengthen my arms by a few inches. My word, this dog loves to run.

So, there you have it. Kristian has been the voice of reason and patience in all of this and even he has been looking up dog beds on the Costco website. I mean, he’s already started buying her toys. And talking to her in baby talk. I’m not saying that we’re getting a dog at this point. I’m just saying that we’re not not getting a dog at this point. 😉