I hate repeating my stories because I'm so afraid I'll sound like a broken record!

But, I found Comet in the shelter not looking for a dog but for other reasons.  Getting a dog was the last thing on my mind!  I had 3 at home!

A dog wandered up the office I worked at and we put it in the back gated yard at our office.  A client of mine wanted to look at the dog because she thought she'd take it.  I had to leave for a meeting and came back and the dog had dug out of the fence and was gone.  So, I head out to the shelter to see if got picked up by chance.......and that's when I saw this little dog with this horrible dislocated-looking shoulder blade!  (her leg didn't look abnormal because she was a puppy and it fit her body at the time)

I went back again the next day hoping I could get her shoulder fixed and pay for it.  That's when I picked her up and we connected with a kiss.  The shelter worker told me her story of coming from a hoarder that had 22 dogs in a house.  But she didn't tell me that her shoulder blade and leg were deformed nor did she seem to know.  She just said, she is $10 and then you can get her shoulder fixed.

I got her two days later (because they were closed on Sunday!).  The rest is history.

MB Rocket......well!  He was one that I said, "he'll do!" after losing my Rugby and knowing Comet needed a companion.  I know Rugby didn't send him to me because surely he would have sent me a sweet German Shep boy to help take care of Comet and not a terrier with synthetic-feeling messy hair that teased Comet!!!!

These stories are so sweet!

I put a shortened version of our story in the Tripawd Heroes book - and it's not really an unplanned road story, so much as Fate sort of playing the shell game with us.

There was a tall, skinny, white & tan speckled very calm pup (named Viona) that I fell in love with at the shelter I volunteer at. I met her the Monday before Thanksgiving - but hubby couldn't get out of work in time to go meet her before they closed. The next day, she was gone. I was crushed. But then the Wed before Thanksgiving, I checked their site again and there was a new pup (Abby - at the time named Smooch) who looked so much like Viona I thought they were siblings. Both were being called Shepherd mixes and both had the same guess for a birthday. They were closed on Thanksgiving, so we were there to meet her first thing on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and of course fell in love and took her home.

About a week later, Viona got returned! (The family said she was too jumpy and bitey - which was exactly like Abby... so they returned her because she was too much for their small kids.) Viona was there for ~2 months, torturing me every time I went in on my assigned day. She looked SO sad - and because she'd been returned for being a "problem" dog (really - just a regular ol' high-energy pup) they put her on restricted access so volunteers weren't allowed to interact with her - only the staff. I wanted to take Viona home too - but I knew with Abby already being a handful it would be too much. For the longest time I couldn't understand why Viona got snatched away from us (we would have NEVER returned her!) but now I think Fate just wanted to make sure Abby got into the hands of someone who could give her as good and as long a life as possible. Somebody else might have put her down when they got the cancer news - and then she would never have had the awesome past 14 months that she's had. (And Fate probably also wanted to teach us to Live In The Moment - which we've tended to not be great at in the past.)

The funny thing is that by the time Viona got adopted she was a much bigger girl - she ended up being kinda short and stocky and nothing at all like our tall, skinny supermodel girl. Clearly, they were NOT siblings. (In the end they changed her from "Shepherd mix" to "Great Pyr." mix, and she finally went to a couple that I hope loves her as much as we would have.)