Wednesday, November 24, 2010

2010 is our Year of the Dog

We just celebrated a two-month anniversary with our dog Olive. She's a Basenji/Lab mix born in Taiwan of all places. A rescue group in Southern California works with a rescue group in Taiwan. Apparently there's a major stray dog problem there -- lucky for us because otherwise we wouldn't have Olive!

We started looking for a rescue dog in September and made a connection with a dog via Doggie Protective Services. They accepted our application and helped us find "Melina" a one year old Basenji/Lab mix. Needless to say, Natalya was off-the-charts excited about meeting Melina.

Unfortunately, when we got to the adoption fair at Pet Food Express we were told that Melina had been adopted the day before.  Poor Natalya! She was heartbroken. She ran out of the store sobbing. Andrea ran after her and I stayed with the Doggie volunteers. They told me to hang around because a litter of black puppies was coming in. The problem was that we didn't want a puppy :)

Then the puppies came in. Three of them. Two girls and a boy. They were about 5 months old. Natalya got permission to get into the pen with them and Olive (named Malika at the time) walked right over to her and started sniffing and kissing her. The other two dogs ignored Natalya. So let's just say that Olive chose Natalya. Two hours later we were back home with the newest addition to our family: Olive Peterwak!

olive's first day at home with natalya