My husband and I came to the decision that we needed a second dog before our current pup was too old to help “train” the new arrival. This meant I went through the AKC website and looked at some possible breed ideas based on temperament, size and color/characteristics. Mostly we ended up with large working class breeds: Akita, Great Dane, Rottweiler, GSD, or a mix between any of these breeds. Then I started digging up resources to find a puppy or young dog to adopt/purchase. Mostly I looked through Petfinder.com to find a list of rescues, and filtered out the ones with unreasonable applications or high fees. The ones that met my standards got bookmarked for later. I finally found a litter of Akitas which were due to arrive from NJ on Labor Day weekend, but they turned out to be either a scam or just someone who wanted to get as much for AKC pups without papers as she could.
While browsing Craigslist I came across a link to The Homeward Bound Project. They met my standards for application content (7 pages, but redundant to a degree) and cost (only $100, incluing transport) as well as possible animals (they had oodles of cute puppies to pick from). So I worked my way through the application after dinner one night while my husband decided which one he liked best. Originally when we turned in our paperwork the one he chose wasn’t available, but the next day we got a call saying the adoption fell through and he was ours if we’d have him. We agreed, and starting making plans since he was scheduled for arrival in a little more than a week. Lots of cleaning, some reading on housebreaking using clicker training, and purchasing the things we would need. We also started playing with names to narrow down the list for picking a name once we got to meet him. His name was currently “Duke” which was a bit bland.
