Shelter Dog

They found her running around in a local park--she was dirty but otherwise in good condition, according to the card they kept on file.  They estimated her age at about 3 months.  Their policy is to hold stray dogs for a week before they will let them be adopted.  My son had already picked a name for the dog he had begged us to get--Raven.  So we figured we needed to find a black dog.  We went back an forth about whether to get a puppy or an older dog.  An older dog might have all sorts of habits and may have been in a difficult situation.  Like the 1-year old black lab we saw at one shelter, where the card said the family had brought it to the shelter because it had "killed the family rabbit".  More than we could handle, we thought; especially since we had a cat.

So here was a little black puppy stray--looked like a black lab, but they said she was probably some sort of mix.  My son played with her, and wanted us to get her.  I told him we would have to wait a week to see if the owners came to claim her.  They told us she wasn't wearing a collar when we found her; in their experience dogs without collars are less likely to be claimed by owners.  So we'll never know how she ended up at that park.  But we decided her middle name would be "Barcroft" after the park where she was found.  We'll never know if she was mistreated, neglected or abused.  Or whether she was just too much for someone to handle.  We can believe the latter--she was energetic, anxious, territorial, willful and intelligent, and we struggled to train her.  More like she trained us.