Friday, July 18, 2008

Dog? No Dog?

Every year Gerard and I enjoy going to "Meet Your Best Friend" at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Many different shelters bring their adoptable dogs and cats all at one time in one place. We enjoy seeing them all and it's always tempting to bring a dog home with us, but no one is home all day so we plan to wait until one of us retires. We still enjoy visiting them all and rejoice when we see some get adopted.

This year when we went, we saw 5-6 medium sized dogs that we both liked and once again, were so tempted to bring one home with us, but ahh, we didn't bring any money along which is a good thing. It kept us from making a impulsive purchase. However, one of the volunteers did suggest that perhaps getting an older dog would work for us since it wouldn't be as active and need as much attention as a younger one. Plus, not many people adopt the older dogs, they usually wind up dying in the shelters. She suggested we get a big crate that it could go in during the day while we aren't at home. Hmm. something to consder. It would be nice to let an older dog live out the end of its life in a loving home . . . like ours.

The questions we must think about are:

1) will it get along okay with the cats?

2) do we really want to put ourselves through the hurt when it dies?

3) do we want the additional expense and responsibility of owning a dog at this time?

We'll have to think about it some more.

What do you think? Should we get a dog now? Please vote on the survey to the right.

2 comments:

Vikki North said...

Well I love dogs and cats, but I have to say that dogs are much more demanding. It’s like having a 3 or 4 year old under foot all the time. It’s difficult to bring a dog into grown cats territory.

In reference to ‘do we really want to put ourselves through the hurt when it dies?’
Karen, you can’t think about that. We go through hurt when anyone or anything we love dies.
What you have to remember is how wonderful you will make that little dog’s life no matter how long it is -and all the joy he will bring to yours.

Vikki

Anonymous said...

Do your cats like dogs? I have 6 cats, and a couple of them would have a real problem with it. If your cats are good with dogs, then YES, give a homeless dog a good life with you...maybe an older shelter dog?

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