Welcome Charlie

In my classroom, we start the day with devotions, prayer requests and praises. We get a lot of requests to pray for pets. "It's my dog's birthday," or "My cat is sick," or even, "My pet has to be put to sleep." During my prayer time, then, I often say something like, "God, thank you that you care about everything that we care about, including our pets."

And then God reminded me that those aren't actually words, they're true.

HopeAnne and I thought another dog would be nice. We went to a "speed dating" thingie at a pet store. We were allowed to choose 6 dogs, all of which we'd have 10 minutes with, one at a time. We fell in love with one little guy, although he was a puppy and I really didn't want a puppy.

Understandably, we had to have a meet-and-greet with our dog before we could take Leo home. Things didn't go well from the get-go. Lucy isn't a fan of the car so she was nervous as soon as we started. We had to drive 30 minutes to get there. The parking lot was full of cards which spooked her. It was cold and they made us wait outside a good 10 minutes before they were ready for us. Lucy wasn't having it. She wouldn't even look at Leo. We were all freezing and not happy. They let us go inside and Lucy still wasn't interested. If Leo approached, she'd snarl. Not a good first impression. Since we knew that she has done well with other dogs at the sitters', we didn't know what had happened. We went home, defeated.

HopeAnne was not happy. I continued praying that the right dog would come along and that Lucy would be civil the next time. We had some pretty specific requests: Not a puppy, less than 40 pounds, and not too long-haired. I applied to every rescue I could find. And waited. I finally got a call from an SPCA 30 minutes in the opposite direction from the pet shop. Would we be interested in foster-to-adopt with a little guy, presumed to be around 7, that had been found as a stray?

I explained again the situation with the last meet-and-greet. She asked, "They didn't give you any other options? A lot of dogs would be stressed in that situation. You really should do this at your own home, over a long period of time." That's what I said about the first fiasco!

And this time it worked. Lucy and Charlie (in keeping with the Peanuts theme started by Linus in 2010) get along like a charm.

And yes, God does care about the things that we care about. Even our pets.

As my son-in-law once said, "You always have to be rescuing something, don't you?"

So welcome to the family, Charlie Chalupa King (so named in keeping with the Peanuts theme but with an option for Victor to call him Chewy (short for Chalupa, of course) since he was very upset that we didn't go with any of his many Star Wars suggestions. I think he called him Chewy for all of one day, but at least we are all happy now.