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Dog Shopping
Oct. 5th, 2008 11:15 pm
Rob's been having anxiety attacks all weekend, which was what prompted his mother to allow us to get a dog. She thinks Rob's spending too much time alone, all pent up in his head & needs someone to talk to while I'm at work all day. Finally Rob's neuroses come in handy for something. It got set off because he wasn't feeling so hot Friday night & his blood pressure & blood sugar spiked really bad. So of course, he started panicking about it, which doesn't help the spike in b.p. & blood sugar, which hypes him up more, so he panics more... it's a nice vicious cycle. So anyway, Rob would really like it if we could get a puppy, a dog to grow up with us & grow old with us.
We got out of the house today, went to the NV ASPCA adoption clinic at the PetSmart up by us. The only puppies they had were pit bulls & chihuahuas - neither Rob or I want either of those. I think of chihuahuas as a potential food source, not as a pet... and I fucking hate pit bulls & the whole pit bull trend. Everyone always says pit bulls are great dogs & they're only aggressive because people make them aggressive, which is true, the same as it is for Rottweilers & Dobermanns, but as far as being a 'great dog' - every pit bull I've ever met has been stubborn, thick-headed and generally stupid.
We had a rough time the last time we got a grown dog from the animal shelter. Ripley, a lab mix (probably mixed w/pit bull but she was very petite & didn't have the dome-like head) was a bad case of SEP (Somebody Else's Problem). She had separation anxiety & would spite-shit all over the house. She ate a brand new pair of tennis shoes, the linoleum in my bathroom, part of my bedroom carpet and the bathroom door. Rob & I were both working so we just didn't have the kind of time to dedicate to her & ended up giving her away to a family w/kids & a yard. A few months after we gave her away, we got another notice from the animal shelter that she'd been picked up running loose & her collar still had our ID tags on it.
We then went to the pet stores in the Meadows & Boulevard malls. I was honestly hoping that Rob would not find a puppy he liked there because, well, mall pet shops are puppy mills. They've cleaned the one up in the Meadows a lot - I was honestly surprised because that place used to look more like a forgotten storage area than a pet shop. It always stank, the puppies were always coughing, the bird cages were usually filthy & the birds always looked more than a little harassed... Now it looks like a brand-new store. Of course, all the puppies were sleeping. Most of them were chihuahuas (again with the freaking chihuahuas, gah!) and a bunch of other yappy little ankle-biters. The Boulevard mall had a few big dogs, like huskies & Malamutes, but I do not support having huskies, Malamutes or wolf hybrids in the fucking desert. We picked up a Nifty Nickel & found someone selling Aussie shepherd puppies... which would have been perfect - except he had docked their tails. WTF?! Why?! If I'm going to buy a puppy, I want the whole puppy! I don't like the tail-docking bullshit, or the ear-docking, either. I've had floppy-eared Dobies in the past, and they hear just fine, thanks.
At any rate, today was a bust. I ended up e-mailing sick to work tomorrow because Rob wants to go to the dr. to talk to her about anti-anxiety meds. Finally! I can also probably get the results of my echocardiogram while I'm at it. I looked around online at the animal shelters here in town... Dewey had no puppies, other than a 6-mo old pit bull. I'm kind of hoping... Lied had a notice of a 3-mo old Catahoula Leopard Hound puppy, a little girl. The last update was on the 1st, so she might be gone already. In fact, she probably is gone already because she's a puppy & puppies usually don't stay in the shelters too long.
I gotta say, I'm just not big on monkey-faced lap dogs or terriers of any size. I don't like wire-haired dogs or sheep dogs. I like dog-dogs. The only small dog I truly like is the Dachshund, because Dachshunds aren't like little dogs, they're more like someone took a big dog & stuffed them into a sausage. But, considering he's going to be spending the most time with it, whatever we get will be Rob's dog, & Rob would honestly prefer a black lab or lab mix. They've got some year-old dogs at Lied's, so we'll check it out tomorrow & see.
We got out of the house today, went to the NV ASPCA adoption clinic at the PetSmart up by us. The only puppies they had were pit bulls & chihuahuas - neither Rob or I want either of those. I think of chihuahuas as a potential food source, not as a pet... and I fucking hate pit bulls & the whole pit bull trend. Everyone always says pit bulls are great dogs & they're only aggressive because people make them aggressive, which is true, the same as it is for Rottweilers & Dobermanns, but as far as being a 'great dog' - every pit bull I've ever met has been stubborn, thick-headed and generally stupid.
We had a rough time the last time we got a grown dog from the animal shelter. Ripley, a lab mix (probably mixed w/pit bull but she was very petite & didn't have the dome-like head) was a bad case of SEP (Somebody Else's Problem). She had separation anxiety & would spite-shit all over the house. She ate a brand new pair of tennis shoes, the linoleum in my bathroom, part of my bedroom carpet and the bathroom door. Rob & I were both working so we just didn't have the kind of time to dedicate to her & ended up giving her away to a family w/kids & a yard. A few months after we gave her away, we got another notice from the animal shelter that she'd been picked up running loose & her collar still had our ID tags on it.
We then went to the pet stores in the Meadows & Boulevard malls. I was honestly hoping that Rob would not find a puppy he liked there because, well, mall pet shops are puppy mills. They've cleaned the one up in the Meadows a lot - I was honestly surprised because that place used to look more like a forgotten storage area than a pet shop. It always stank, the puppies were always coughing, the bird cages were usually filthy & the birds always looked more than a little harassed... Now it looks like a brand-new store. Of course, all the puppies were sleeping. Most of them were chihuahuas (again with the freaking chihuahuas, gah!) and a bunch of other yappy little ankle-biters. The Boulevard mall had a few big dogs, like huskies & Malamutes, but I do not support having huskies, Malamutes or wolf hybrids in the fucking desert. We picked up a Nifty Nickel & found someone selling Aussie shepherd puppies... which would have been perfect - except he had docked their tails. WTF?! Why?! If I'm going to buy a puppy, I want the whole puppy! I don't like the tail-docking bullshit, or the ear-docking, either. I've had floppy-eared Dobies in the past, and they hear just fine, thanks.
At any rate, today was a bust. I ended up e-mailing sick to work tomorrow because Rob wants to go to the dr. to talk to her about anti-anxiety meds. Finally! I can also probably get the results of my echocardiogram while I'm at it. I looked around online at the animal shelters here in town... Dewey had no puppies, other than a 6-mo old pit bull. I'm kind of hoping... Lied had a notice of a 3-mo old Catahoula Leopard Hound puppy, a little girl. The last update was on the 1st, so she might be gone already. In fact, she probably is gone already because she's a puppy & puppies usually don't stay in the shelters too long.
I gotta say, I'm just not big on monkey-faced lap dogs or terriers of any size. I don't like wire-haired dogs or sheep dogs. I like dog-dogs. The only small dog I truly like is the Dachshund, because Dachshunds aren't like little dogs, they're more like someone took a big dog & stuffed them into a sausage. But, considering he's going to be spending the most time with it, whatever we get will be Rob's dog, & Rob would honestly prefer a black lab or lab mix. They've got some year-old dogs at Lied's, so we'll check it out tomorrow & see.
