Pulled: Monday September 12, 2011 from City of Columbia Animal Shelter
Adoption commitment: Friday October 21, 2011 by Frank and Dianne Plyler
Meet Chester N squared, or Chester North:
Chester James “Mickey,” who John Muckelbauer has been fostering for me, found his forever home on Friday with new friend Amy Bolger. Yay for Mickey, renamed Murphy.
And yay for John, who is now fostering Chester McBee. John met him last night and decided that Valentino suits him better than Mac. And, once I read about Rudolph Valentino, dubbed “the Latin Lover,” I agreed. Poor Chester Lexi. — see previous post for her encounters with prepubescent Mac.
John started calling him “Tino” for short, but this didn’t work, because Mac thought he was in trouble every time John said “Ti-NO.” And Mac’s a jumpy little guy already. So, John started calling him Rudolph, Valentino’s first name, then Ruddy for short, and then Roo. We’ve decided that Roo is perfect, because of both the nod to the Latin lover and to Kanga’s son Roo, of Winnie the Pooh fame. — because, well, Mac is a jumpy little guy.
John opening his door to Mac “Roo” enabled me to open my door to Chester North.
I think Chester North is part Ewok and submit the following close-up as evidence:
However, his paperwork lists him as a Pekingnese/Shih Tzu mix. I looked this up, and apparently, he’s a “designer” mix:
http://www.designermixes.org/Breed_Info/440/Shih-teze.aspx
And, so far, he hits all of the Shih-teze characteristics: Check for loving, smart and friendly; check for easy to train (he paws at the door when he needs to go out); and check, especially, for the “mighty heart for small size” part.
He’s 3 years old, fully vetted, neutered and micro-chipped.
Scott asked me last night if there would be another dog when he got home from work today, after making a point of showing me how low our checking account is. (He does that so often, though, that it has sort of lost all effect.)
“I don’t know if I’ll get a dog tomorrow,” I said honestly, because I’m sane enough to know that I’m at my limit. — that at this point, I can only get smaller dogs that are easy to place.
He sighed. “Yes there will be. Because that’s how you roll.”
But, I did call the shelter first to see if they had such a dog, one that needed out and that would be relatively easy to place.
Enter North. The designer mix. Poor North was relinquished by his owner, who was moving and unable to take him. Foreclosure perhaps? The owner seems to have loved him, and stressed to the shelter workers all she could think of to make him desirable: his breed, the fact that he’s housetrained, etc. She had given him his monthly flea treatment. She left his orange and black Harley Davidson collar. And then she had to go. North was heartbroken, of course.
Yes, we’ve seen lots of puppy-dog-eyes in his quiet moments:
So, to honor his first owner, his nickname will be Harley. That fits him better than Chester North anyway. My system of naming foster dogs, alphabetically, after SC towns/cities/counties sort of falls apart with some letters. — like N, and especially X and Z.
One more thing: I’ve taken to hiding dogs around the house, because I like to make life fun for Scott. Before I left for work, I put Harley behind the closed door of our bedroom. Scott didn’t see him when he went to change clothes, but he left the bedroom door open and came back from the kitchen to find Harley, sprawled out on the couch.
Then, I got home from work.
Me: “What’s that?! Did you get a dog?! I thought we didn’t have any money!”
Scott: “You got the dog.”
Me: “No. Today’s my long day at work. You know that. I wouldn’t have had time to get a dog.”
Scott: “Bullsh*t.”
Harley: “Woof.”
Fostering Chester 