A few of you may remember our previous dog adoptions chronicled in these pages, the sad stories of Mr. Rogers, and later, Diamond. I won’t link to those tragic tales today.
Well, we still wanted to find a dog who would be buddies with our girl Simone. I know it’s common to want a second dog so they can keep each other company, but in this case we feel it’s really appropriate. Simone clearly has always wanted another dog to share pack activities with. We go on meet-up walks every week, and she is always disappointed to separate from the other dogs. She is ten years old now and fairly unsteady on her feet due to neurological issues, so this is probably her last chance to have a pack of her own.
Our quest took us through a list of shelter and rescue dogs. A variety of hounds, mutts, and pits, each of whom was a good dog but none of whom were quite right. A month ago we met a nice 7-year-old mix named Murdock. He was fine, but not really interested in Simone, and we did not quite fall in love.
While we were there, however…we saw another dog meeting a family. A pretty blue-and-white pit bull type dog, who looked up politely at each family member, played politely with the children, and during a game of “I have the toy, you can’t catch me” went so far as to lie down and yield up her toy when the smallest child couldn’t keep up.
“What a gem,” we thought. But when she passed Simone on her way back into the shelter enclosure, she stared a moment too long. Having had enough experience with dog reactivity to thoroughly poison our perceptions, we worried about that long look.
A week later, someone from our meet-up group who knew we were looking for a new family member contacted my wife, gushing about a shelter dog they’d walked with who was good with other dogs.
It turned out to be the same dog we’d seen before…still available!
Suddenly we were excited. We took Simone in to meet this dog…the pretty pittie looked at her a moment, then shrugged and came to us, then settled in happily walking near Simone. It turned out she’s deaf – which may explain the long look at Simone. Without hearing cues (apparently she’s completely deaf from birth), this dog has to look at everyone for visual cues.
And so we found ourselves adopting this beauty. Meet Luna:
Luna’s official shelter picture
[WARNING: that is just about the most ridiculously goofy pit bull picture you’ll ever see!]
Given that headshot and her personality, I’m stunned she was still available when we got her. It is true that there was a medical report saying she had balance issues as well, but we haven’t seen any – nor has our vet. Maybe it was a temporary illness; at any rate, our Simone has given us plenty of experience with wobbly dogs, and we are not deterred. Perhaps the medical report and the deafness scared everyone off – we are glad to have had the chance to adopt her ourselves.
Damaged as our confidence has been (from our previous misadventure with an extremely reactive/aggressive dog), our adoption of Luna, a physically strong, active pit bull was not without trepidation. Step by step we brought her into our house and Simone’s life…
And she’s been just FABULOUS!
