[Avaindimik]

( Didn't see a current thread on this, but if anyone else does feel free to bump it up here. )

I love to hear these kinds of stories. Mine is long and kind of boring but I can't tell a short story if I tried to. lol

We got our only dog Keoki from an animal shelter about two years ago. He was basically going to get PTS that day or the day after.

We (my sister and I, at 17 and 14, got to "pick" out the dog we wanted) initially knew we wanted a pit bull type dog but we had only one real qualification and that was the dog had to be decent with cats because we had several at that time and always plan on having a few cats at any given time. She secretly wanted a white/ light colored puppy no more than 3 or 4 months old and I just wanted a rescue dog with looks being irrelevant.

So we get into the kennel area and it's totally overwhelming. The dogs are all in an uproar because they want out of the kennels like usual or want to get to the dog next to them, except for one dog in the second kennel. He didn't move at all and was still laying peacefully on his little blanket at the back of his kennel. When I went up to the kennel he walked over sniffed my hand and gave me sad eyes. Pretty much an immediate connection kind of thing where I just knew he would be the right dog and I didn't need to look anymore.

I knew right when I saw him that I was going to get him, but I wanted someone else in my family to say something first. Of course my sister didn't see her dream dog at the shelter (lol) and thought we should try another shelter so I finally spoke up and basically told them that we were getting "Butters" the 5 month old pit mix, pending a cat test of course. They basically agreed with me because they were sick of looking and generally trust my judgment.

Everyone at the shelter seemed to think we were nuts for wanting the dog. I guess they figured we wouldn't be able to handle the dog and his apparent issues, maybe they thought we were going to return him or something. The whole thing was strange. They had no paper work for him at all- just said that he had been seized from outside a property. At first they told us he wasn't neutered and that we couldn't take him home that day, but then they said he was neutered. They also said he had been dewormed already- two nights later he vomited a LIVE worm on my pillow. The staff wasn't able to walk him because he was terrified of being outside and had sores/ fly bites on his footpads and legs. Although he was technically a "puppy" we only had to pay the cheaper adult dog price. They even gave us a 60 day guarantee that if he died because "he may have parvo, but we aren't sure"- we could get another dog for free. Never had I ever heard of something like that.

Like I said- weird. But he passed the cat test with flying colors and he went home with us after being carried to the car- which was easy since he was pretty tiny:


So he came home and surprised everyone by being house trained, crate trained, and learning commands in less than a week. Being able to go for walks and proper socialization for him to feel comfortable in any situation took about two months. Great dog, probably the best dog I have ever owned or will own. SO glad we took a chance with that one. Here he is now: