Meet Henry

In September I had my dog, Baby, put to sleep.  She lived a LOOONG life.  She was 19 years old.  Almost 19 1/2 years.. you know the half part only counts when you're really young or really old!!  It was hard, obviously, because people become so attached to their pets.  Her mom was my dog so I had Baby from the moment she was born.  However, it was her time.

We were in the process of adopting a retired greyhound.  My gosh- what a process!!  The application was 4 pages long.  They actually call references and your vet.  They do a house visit and required locks on all gates.  We went through all of it.  There were 2 dogs that would match our profile (the dog had to like kids and cats).  However, they turned out heartworm positive and weren't available yet.  But reading the contract from them Pete decided he didn't want to sign it anyway.  They had some crazy stuff in there.  It sounded more like they owned the dog we would just have the daily care of it. Anyway, we decided against it.

So that had us starting over looking for that perfect dog.  I finally found an animal shelter about 30 miles away from us that had tons of cute pets.  We had several to check out.  It was so sad to see how many dogs (and cats) they had that needed homes.  Not sure how parents actually adopt kids from orphanages with all those adorable kids begging to go home.  I'm sure it is more than heart breaking. In the end we chose a German shorthaired Pointer named Henderson. He was so skinny but so nice.

We have had him for about a week and a half.  He has already fattened up a lot.  He really is such a great dog.  Him and our cat have not come face to face yet.  Well at least not closely or nicely.  He is very interested in her.  She not so much!  At first we thought he would really like to eat her but now I really think he just wants to check her out.  She does not have front claws.  We wish she did just for these few weeks!  But she used to scratch Max when he was younger (not that he deserved it or anything, right?).

Henry is living life as a true house dog now.  He loves the feather mattress the kids put in the living room. He loves to go outside and sniff our backyard for rabbits.  I doubt we have baby bunnies this spring in our yard!  He loves walks.  He loves all the attention he can get.  He is somewhere between 2-3 years old.  The animal shelter found him as a stray. They said he was near death when they found him. He was that skinny!  Within a week home we had him actually leaving food in his bowl because he was no longer starving.  One of his dewclaws have been ripped out.  ouch!  The vet said he may need surgery but for now to watch how the nail grows back. Henry was only at the animal shelter for 2 weeks.  He is such a sweet dog.