Welcome Home

It has been a long road. One that has had many hills and valleys. It has been a road that I have contemplated whether or not I wanted to stay on it. I (we) had been on that road 14 months and 14 days....we decided to take another road.

It wasn't an easy decision. We had prayed about it, talked about it, even made a pros/cons list. We have toiled with this decision for months now, but when it was time to make a decision, the pros out weighed the cons.

We would like to introduce the newest member of our family........Romeo
Romeo is 19 months old. His original owners both lost their jobs and couldn't keep him. They gave him to a shelter and he contracted Kennel Cough which turned into pneumonia. They were going to put him down, but Dr Steep a vet in Oxford Michigan asked if he could have him. The original owner's sister worked for him and told him what was going on. The Shelter agreed and that is where Romeo spent the next 2 1/2 months of his life being nursed back to health. During that time Romeo was also neutered and updated on all his vaccines.

Dr. Steep and his staff have been patiently waiting for the right family to come along and adopt him. They have had several families interested in him, but none of them were the "right family" per Dr. Steep. Then we came along.

We had put an application in with Rottie Rescue about a month ago. We figured that if we were to have another dog, that God would have to give one too us. We had talked at length about buying a puppy, but we didn't want to spend the money and really didn't want to go through all of the potty training.

Yesterday we received a phone call from Dr. Steep's office. They said that they thought we might be a great family for Romeo. They asked if we could come to see him.

Kevin had just come home from work and we looked at each other and said, we have the time, lets go meet him and see if he is a dog we might be interested in.

When we first arrived they put us in a room and then left to get Dr. Steep. He came in and met us and told us all of Romeo's history. He also told us that he knows two of the vets we saw with our other dogs. When we put our application in we had to call our vet and release confidentiality so that the rescue could talk to our vets to find out if we were good pet owners or not :-)I guess it doesn't hurt when we owned three rotties (at the same time) and all three were VERY nice. We were kind of hard to forget!

After a few minutes the Dr. told us that he would have Rachael bring him in to see what we thought. We heard him coming before we saw him.

The door opened and we all just looked at each other. The first thing I thougtht was that he could be Simba's brother. He looked so much like Simba it was almost weird..just a smaller version of him. We were left alone with him to play with him and "test" him. The vet and his employee's couldn't say enough good things about him. Dr. Steep even said that his wife had said that they should get rid of one of their other dogs and take Romeo instead.

After about an hour and a half in this little room with Romeo, Kevin and I decided that it was time to bring a dog back into our home. All the employees came in to say their goodbye's. They were crying and hugging him. Which of course I got all choked up. Jilli was very upset that they were all upset. It was an emotional time for all of us.

So I know you are all wondering WHY we would choose to bring another dog in our home. Well, we really missed the companionship. Our house was cleaner...yes, but so much more lonelier. Kevin missed having someone to lick his face in the mornings (sorry, I was NOT going to do that). Our children missed having a dog. Especially Jilli. I didn't realize that until we had Tiki a few weeks ago. We feel that it is a good way to teach responsibility to our children. It is great for their immunities especially since our children are not in school. I really wanted a running partner that wouldn't complain that we were going too fast/slow it was too cold/warm and honestly a running partner that looks scary. We truly missed having a dog these past months.

I will admit that I am not looking forward to the dog hair and all the extra cleaning. We thought a lot about our family that is allergic to dogs and how it has been nice not having to worry about the dog when they are here. We know we will not be able to just up and leave for 2 weeks at a time with no cares. We walked into this knowing full well, what we were doing (unlike when we brought Simba home almost 12 years ago).

I feel that God answered my prayers about getting another dog and whether or not we should.. When I was praying about a dog, I prayed that he would be free....I didn't expect that everything that I had thought we would have to pay for would be free as well. Like having to neuter the dog and update all his vaccines. Dr. Steep even gave us a years worth of heartworm meds for free!

So to those of you that asked when we were going to get another dog.....I guess the answer is....yesterday. Blessings!