After much discussion and heated battles, Jeff and I have adopted a new puppy. Jeff wanted a larger pure bred dog with papers and one that you pay an ass load of money for. I really wanted Jeff to have his own dog, but the stipulation was that he could only adopt a pure bred from a rescue or shelter. I am not a fan of those back yard breeders, horrible!
Jeff looked high and low in the Houston Chronicle and Craigslist and found a posting for a Rottweiler puppy - God help us. Having been bitten by a Rottweiler when I was a teenager, it made me a bit leery of the breed, but I thought we could give it a chance. We sent an email to the gentleman's posting and did not get a response. We sent emails to various other postings, one for a lab, a doberman, and a German shepherd, but they were either asking ridiculous amounts of money or did not reply back.
Roger contacted us a couple of days later regarding this skinny Rottweiler puppy he found on the northside of Houston and invited us to come a take a look. I told Jeff that I wasn't sure about a puppy as we would have to train him not to chew on our brand new beautiful furniture or piss all over our brand new carpet and hard wood flooring. But, he wanted to look anyway and I said ok. We drove up to the north side of Houston to Roger's home and met Max. He was pretty skinny, but had tons of energy. Jeff fell in love immediately. I, of course, wanted to bring Skinny along to meet her new future sibling. She did not warm to him at all, but she doesn't really warm to any other dogs.
Max was too cute and looked like he really needed a forever home. Roger explained to us that his co-worker found him on the side of the road and almost hit him. The co-worker brought him to Roger and asked him to find a home for him. Roger said he would have taken him but he travels a lot for his work and could not take on the responsibility.
After playing with Max for a while, Jeff and I looked at one another and he gave me the "can we please take him home" look and I said ok. We told Roger that if he did not have any other takers then we would like to make him a part of our family. Roger said we seemed like a nice enough couple and agreed to us taking the little guy home. Roger had already purchased some food, a crate, and toys for Max and he let us take those as well.
We loaded Max and Skinny into the car and headed home. Jeff and I agreed that Max was too common a dog name and we decided to call him something else, but what? On the drive home we blurted out every name that came to mind, but nothing sounded right. We were just about home and passed a billboard for Shiner Bock Beer. I said "how about Shiner?" and Jeff said that sounded perfect. So Shiner it was!
We got home and Max/Shiner walked into the house slowly and cautiously. Poor little guy, he had been through so many changes that it is a wonder that he even trusted us at all. He sniffed around the house and Skinny immediately set her boundaries by growling at him and showing her teeth. He wanted to play and Skinny being almost 17, she is pretty much played out. We put his bed together and laid him down for the night. He cried for a little while and then fell asleep for a few hours. He woke us him in the early morning and we let him out to do his business.
I was able to get him an appointment with my vet the next morning. Dr. Brown gave him a good check up and said that he had an infection in his ears, intestinal worms, and was underweight. He guessed his age to be around four months and gave us some medicine to help with the worms and his ears.
He has made himself quite at home this past week we have had him. He wakes up once or twice at night to pee and/or poop. He loves to chew on everything, so we have an abundance of toys for him and he has taken over Skinny's toys too. We are feeding him expensive Science Diet food to balance out his little system and put weight on him. He does pee in his bed and on our floors too, but we are working with him. We do not know what his first months of life were, but we can guess that he probably was not loved on a lot as he had a hard time letting us pet his head. He is getting better about it, but we think he was more rough housed than loved. His affections are coming out slowly.
Skinny does not like him and really tries to stay in her corner. He had crossed the line a couple of times and Skinny has had to remind him that he was too close. Judging from his size now, he is going to be pretty big. As he will be a larger dog, we really want to take him to Man's Best Friend for some obedience and attack on command training. Jeff's friend had had great success with this training and we want to give it a shot.
We made the right decision by bringing little Shiner into our lives. Jeff and I will make him a loving member of our family and Skinny will get used to him too. I am glad that we adopted him and did not go through a breeder!
