Bonz!

This past weekend we adopted a dog! Here’s a snapchat of him in the back seat of the car on the way home from the shelter:

We had been pouring over photos of dogs at the local shelters for days and days. We had watched as dogs appeared and disappeared. What my sister said is true: it’s very difficult to adopt a dog, buy a house, or get a used car right now.

We set aside Saturday to go to the shelters, and - based on the photos - chose the order we would visit them. Cutest dogs first.

We headed up to Loveland in time to arrive at the Larimer Humane Society right when they opened. We had three dogs we wanted to see, two puppies and an adult. We thought we might have to tell the front desk who we were interested in seeing.

The Larimer Humane Society is a new, swank facility. I’ve never seen a fancier shelter. All the “cages” are plexiglass, with open-air portions at the bottom. There is a sort of walking route where the prospective adopters can view all the dogs in the shelter.

The first dog we saw was named “Freddy” - he came right up to the plexiglass and acted as if he wanted to be our dog. We hadn’t even considered him when we were looking at the photos because his photo was so weird.

But that’s the thing about adopting a dog. Or any animal. There’s going to be some sort of cosmic chemistry between you, and you can’t tell about that from the photos. You just have to meet the dogs in person. And then, on top of the chemistry, you know that you’ll bond simply by living together and soon you’ll all be family.

We looked at all the dogs, and then asked to have an interview with “Freddy” and “Jemma”. “Jemma” was a four-year-old who was an extremely fearful girl. The shelter said that she had hip dysplasia and could probably never go to doggie daycare because of her terror of other dogs. “Freddy” was a six-month-old who had lived in shelters for most of his life. He had been in a high-kill shelter in Arizona and not adopted, so he was shipped up here instead of being euthanized.

The shelter employee asked us if we had a preference who we interviewed first, and we said no. So, we were put into a room, and they brought us “Freddy”. “Freddy” walked up to me, sat in my lap, and shoved his face into my jacket.

I was in love.

We played with him for a while, and he was nothing but sweet and awesome, so we decided not to interview “Jemma” - we thought it’d make us too sad.

I did the paperwork, and “Freddy” was ours! I asked the shelter person if “Freddy” knew his name, and he said no. He said that the Arizona shelter had probably called him something else. So, we decided that we had the car-ride home to figure out what we wanted to call him.

We decided to call him “Bones”. And then we decided to spell his name “Bonz”. Here’s another photo:

Supposedly he is a Treeing Walker Coonhound. A breed I’d never heard of. Their super-power is being able to chase raccoons up trees and keep them there until their human can shoot them. Yikes.

Treeing Walker Coonhounds are truly a southern breed, which makes me skeptical that Bonz is a purebred. And speaking of that, although he looks like a Treeing Walker Coonhound, looks can be deceiving. Several people at work were recently arguing about what breed a particularly large day care dog was. The consensus was that he was some sort of Mastiff-Pit Bull mix. They pooled their money to get a DNA test (with the pet parents’ approval) and the test came back with the result: 50% chihuahua! Everyone was floored.

In any case, Treeing Walker Coonhounds were developed when a stolen dog named Tennessee Lead was crossed into a line of Walker Foxhounds (who were named for Thomas Walker - the man who developed the breed in the mid-1700s). The United Kennel Club recognized the breed in 1945, and the AKC in 2012 - making Treeing Walker Coonhounds the AKC’s 174th official breed. (There are a total of 197 breeds recognized today. The Biewer Terrier is the most recent. They are, basically, three-colored Yorkies).

The Treeing Walker Coonhounds are famous for having a “hot nose” which means that when tracking they’ll abandon an old scent for a fresher one, leading to more success for their humans.

Our first few days with Bonz may have been a little bit over-active. I had read that he would have high exercise needs, so on Sunday I took him on eight separate walks. We played fetch inside the house. He seemed relieved when I finally put him into his crate Sunday night.

We’re all learning to relax together now. We're deliriously in love with one another! I have to share one more photo of Bonz, and this is one of him experiencing television for the first time. (We were watching Fantastical Beasts, which may have been of interest to him). He ran to the room behind the television to find the creatures on the screen.