i feel like we have been looking for a dog FOREVER. however, eljay tells me that we've only been approved by the Aussie rescue for a month. (of course, we started looking before that, but still, it's not a tremendous amount of time in the scheme of things.)

Monday, they emailed us about a dog coming into the system. a female, younger than we intended, but C was willing to step up with training and make it work. we said YES.

i went off and researched developmental stages, and the class schedules for our dog school. i dithered over making any plans for the next couple weekends because i might need to be ready to travel for pickup or stay home and bond.

i've been alternately anxious and euphoric all week. all communication from me to C is punctuated with "dog". (i assume our chatlogs look like there's a badly programmed bot in there.)

dog.

today, the current owner is no longer so sure she wants to surrender.

i'm starting to get superstitious that i shouldn't tell anyone that we've got a prospect, since every time i tell someone, we fail.

OTOH, so far we fail every time, so there's no magic here. just failure.

right one will show up, blah blah blah. it still hurts.

***
at least i'm working from home today (Thanks, Obama) so i can burn some frustration by cleaning and doing this.

we've started applying for breed rescues that were components of Molly. the Australian Shepherd folks have contacted our references and are conducting a home visit on Tuesday. i am trying to keep my excitement at a dull roar.

C is more particular than i am. i prefer a female, he doesn't want to consider males *at all*. he wants 2-4 years old, i'm willing to look at 1-5. he's the primary caregiver, so i need to suck it up.

Tuesday!

i pledge to write more on lj every time I complain about facebook and/ or G+.

there's a lot of Russian spam today)

Anyway... i do not have a new dog. Four solid potentials, all claimed by 2 people each ahead of us. We kind of fell into Molly, so i wasn't mentally or emotionally prepared to deal with the cutthroat pace of the shelter this time. dogs go before they get listed on the website. They go the day they hit the floor. this is great and amazing. this is really complex and exhausting and expensive if you don't live near a shelter. it's not possible to place a hold until you've met the dog. this is reasonable for many reasons; it would be great if one of us worked nearby and could pop in at lunchtime every day.

i think we're going to have to start filling out rescue applications. i'd been avoiding this due to there being a lot of..fanaticism...about what constitutes a good home for a dog. many of them won't talk to you at all if you don't own a house with a fenced yard. *sigh* i literally have years of data proving how much exercise molly got, how many hours she spent on walks and the mileage. it's pretty much impossible for an unsupervised dog to escape from my place. ditto being stolen. my dog will never be expected to entertain herself or be tied out alone.

this is all a big deal to me emotionally. e_bourne calls it pregnant-with-dog, and that's the best thing that i can liken it to, the madness of desire for parenthood and the way it stains your thinking about every aspect of your life. (oh, that's how people feel about babies! every so often i get another confirmation that it was wise to not have children; i have zero longing. i hope to be more understanding in the future - i support other people being parents, but i haven't been able to "get" the way women can narrow their focus to that one goal.) i didn't sleep well Thursday night, i went home and cried on Friday, and i apologize to everyone I've bored in person with nattering on about website searches and shelters.

***
meanwhile, we've been cleaning and taming the household. we let things pile up as Molly's health deteriorated. this week we installed shelves in our storage unit, C organized his miniatures, and i bought and assembled underbed drawers. taking control over things we can control helps. i've been spinning. i think I'll dye some fiber tonight.

the dog stuff we kept is out of storage. there's a new box for toys. there's a new leash, and i designed and sewed up a new holder for poo bags. i haven't sewed much for a long time. (that's what i did when there was no dog last week.) assuming i ever get to field test it, i'll write up the pattern.

everything comes back to the dog.