Life coming at me

So one of our local animal shelters had a free adoption day, and I talked Bobby into going to take a look at the animals they had up for adoption. Of course, this was a mistake, and I think we both knew it. We're both big softies for animals; I seriously cried for about half the time we were in the shelter. It just makes me really sad to see animals with labels on their cages such as "unwanted" or "stray, picked up on (date)". For that matter, it makes me sad to see all these little creatures caged up, rolling around in their own pee and poop and just waiting for someone to come and take them away -- either to a better life or to be killed because of shelter overpopulation.

We had discussed it beforehand, and we primarily wanted to look at dogs. Since we're planning to get a house sometime in the coming months, we thought it might be nice to find a friend for Ranger. So we walked around the three long rows of dogs. We came up to this one little dog, and I couldn't help but stop and look at her. She was probably one of the least friendly and really just seemed pretty sad. I rubbed her nose through the cage before moving on, but I came back to her cage to pet her again. One of the shelter workers commented that I "couldn't seem to get away from that dog." A bulldog puppy had caught Bobby's eye, so we took the puppy I liked (a lab/terrier mix according to the shelter) and one of the bulldog puppies out to play with for a few minutes. The bulldog puppy was cute, but the sad mutt really just stole my heart.

So we got her. Her name's Rosie:


She's really been a sweetheart, but Ranger's having a hard time adjusting to her. Hopefully they'll start getting along soon! We think she probably was abused by her previous owners, but it's also possible she got hit by a car (she has a couple of pretty bad scars). She's very scared and skittish and undernourished, but we're going to do everything we can to change that!