Meet Barney

This is Barney. He is the first dog that I've ever owned. It was sort of an act of fate how I came to obtain him.

On October 18th, Kira and I decided to take a walk along the waterfront. It was a bit random and out of the blue that we decided to do this. But I figured, hey why not? Flash and Yukon (my roommate Joe's dogs) needed to get out, I could use the exercise, and Kira, it turns out, had just been talking to her boyfriend about how she needed to get out and do something. She hadn't done much since her friend Tyler's death, and I happened to text her and ask her if she wanted to go with me right after that.

We weren't out for very long, since Kira had to go to work, and I was going out of town for a concert. But we still managed to walk about 2 miles, and we had time to spare. Since it was a nice day, we grabbed some sodas and parked the car right by her building and hung out on the hood of my car, soaking up the last bit of mid-October sun.

We were getting annoyed by the drunken/tweaker idiots hanging outside of their house right across the street from us, and even more annoyed that their dog was running around in the street, almost getting hit by a car. So we asked them, not so nicely, if that was their dog, and they claimed that they had never seen it before. We eventually got him out of the street, and he seemed a little excited to see us, but he was still a little skeptical to let us near him. We noticed that he had no collar, and he was not fixed. However, he was not dirty, and seemed pretty social. He had seen Flash and Yukon in my car, and immediately jumped in to meet them. So I was in a dilemma. Do I let this dog go and hope that he doesn't get hit by a car as he makes his way back to his owners? Or do I take him to the Humane Society, and hope that his owners have enough sense to look for him? It was obvious that he belonged to someone, but must not have been taken care of very well.

He grew attached to Flash and Yukon immediately. I stopped by my house to drop them off, and when I let them outside to go potty, he sat at the back door and whimpered, watching them. He even grew attached to me. As I drove him to the Humane society, he stayed on my lap the entire time, even napping a bit. I felt myself already attached to this dog, and I almost felt guilty bringing him to the Humane society. So while I was there, I filled out an adoption application in the chance that no one would claim him. My husband was the one that egged me on to do it, too.

After two weeks, he was ours. Kira even calls herself his other mom.

I definitely can see why new mothers get a reputation for letting themselves go. For the first week I had him, I got very little sleep, because I had to make sure that I took him potty plenty of times throughout the night. When I was at home, every second was spent following him around, making sure he wasn't tearing things up or marking his territory on anything. If I brought him somewhere and left him in the car, or kenneled him, my mind was constantly in "mom mode", wondering how he was doing. But eventually, things calmed down and he adjusted beautifully. He is still attached to Flash and Yukon, and even learning good habits from them. He also loves to cuddle. I haven't been able to sleep close to Russ since we got him, since he likes to sleep under the covers, wedged in between us. He's just lucky he's so cute when he does it!

He has been a handful, but I love him. Welcome to the family, Barney.