Today, October 4, 2021, marks 7 whole years since we brought Rook home. Flint was, of course, a well-established member of our family at that point and had been for 6+ years. Although Justin thought (and still does think) that one dog is perfect, I lived with multiple dogs for bulk of my life before moving in with Justin, and I wanted a second for a long time before Rook came along. (There were times that we did have two- Sienna’s many months of fostering with us, and one of my mom’s current dogs spent some time with us while he was undergoing heartworm treatment- but temporary dogs aren’t quite the same as permanent residents.) We started looking at second dogs in August of 2014. In truth, Rook was available pretty much that entire time, but we kept overlooking him. He just didn’t catch our eye.
The first dog we met was a little cattledog mix, Pepper, through the rescue that we ultimately adopted Rook from. She was sweet, and we actually had two meetings with her. Flint was fine with her; neither of them actually showed much interest in the other during either meeting. After the second time though, we just couldn’t be sure she was the dog for us. Besides, her foster really loved her, felt she fit well in her home, and even though it would be the end of her fostering due to the number of dogs in her home, she was thinking of adopting her.
The second dog we desperately wanted to meet, sounded perfect on paper! He was ~10 months old, knew all of his basic commands, walked well on a leash, was friendly with pretty much everyone and everything. He was a beautiful brindle pitbull mix whose name I’m drawing a blank on now. The problem was that everyone else thought he sounded perfect as well, and he already had several families lined up to meet him. Since the rescue coordinators expected him to go home with one of them, they weren’t scheduling any more meet-and-greets for him. He became unavailable, then briefly became available again a few weeks later. The same thing happened with another potential adopter, and we never got the chance to meet him.
In the time between the previous dog finding a home, then not having a home, then being adopted again, we looked at other rescues. We found another gorgeous, ~1 year old brindle pittie named Karma at a rescue in South Jersey. They allowed sleepovers, so after our initial meeting, we went ahead and scheduled one. Karma was a well-mannered girl who got along perfectly with Flint and was always sweet with us and anyone else we introduced her to. The problem came when we attempted to take her for a hike in Valley Forge Park. She just couldn’t keep up. She kept stopping to rest for longer and longer periods. Given her strong desire to be with us and do what we were doing, we felt that we were not the best home for her because she wouldn’t be able to join us on all of our regular outdoor adventures, which we had no plans of stopping, nor would we ever consider leaving Flint behind, as hiking (or really just walking anywhere) was his favorite activity.
Eventually, I contacted a high school classmate of mine that I knew fostered for the original rescue we were looking at, told her what we we were looking for, and asked her opinion on which dog would be a good fit. Bruno was her immediate response. He was an ~4 month old hound dog who had been with the rescue since August, and the rest of his litter had already found homes. For some reason, he was still waiting. He had plenty of energy and would have no trouble keeping up with our active lifestyle, we were assured, after we told them about our experience with Karma.
Bruno’s foster was out of town, so he was staying at the farm of the rescue’s founder for the weekend. Justin, I recall, was a little bit grumpy as we drove out to Spring City. When we arrived, Bruno was running around a small, fenced in area with a pair of Beagle puppies. The volunteer quickly put the Beagles inside, we said, “hello,” to little Bruno, who was happy, friendly and plenty engaged with his environment. We brought Flint into the pen as well. The dogs smelled each other and then went about checking out the rest of the pen. Eventually, Justin said, “He’ll do,” I filled out the paperwork, and we loaded him into the car. He kindly vomited food and some chunks of a red toy(?) in the backseat on the way home.
We debated names for a short time, no more than a day or two. It was quickly apparent that we had overshot on the level of energy. Rook was either full steam ahead, go-go-go, bouncing off the walls and barking at you or dead asleep. He was constantly presenting toys to play with or harassing Flint to engage with him. I used to say that 50% of the time, he was cracking me up with his goofiness, and the other 50% of the time, I wanted to wring his little neck. His nickname was “The Tiny Turd” at first. He ate several of Flint’s dog beds and shredded one corner of our bedroom carpet. Other than those things, he wasn’t a destructive puppy. We tried to crate train him and failed miserably. Every time we came home, you’d hear him howling the instant you opened the car door. You’d approach the crate to see his chest and the floor around him covered in drool. His teeth were stained silver from chewing the crate bars. We gave up. He was going to hurt himself if we kept it up. Until he was a year old, he came to work with me every day because he wasn’t fully house-trained until about then (and would shred Flint’s beds and/or chew that one corner of the carpet if left to his own devices).
Rook has definitely mellowed over time. He now sleeps most of the day and has bouts of playfulness (instead of the reverse). He’s got plenty of neuroses, and he still yells at us on a regular basis. He yells at the mail lady and all of the delivery trucks that drive down our street daily. He remembers every house where a dog has ever barked at him from the yard or a window and looks for them to yell at them too. Any time I pull a blanket off the shelf for myself, he’s there, asking to be covered too. Justin’s forever complaining about Rookie getting in and out of bed every night and taking all of the blankets with him when he leaves, but I’m comforted by his warmth against my legs. (It’s also usually easier to just let him in than to try and send him away every 15 minutes or so.) No matter what else has happened in our history or is yet to come in my adventures with Rook, I’ll always be grateful beyond words to have had his presence and companionship to give my life stability after losing Flinty. I hope we have at least 7 more years of snuggles, hikes and games together.
“Every new friend is a new adventure… the start of more memories.” ~Patrick Lindsay
