How it all began...

On August 11, 2008 the hubby and I adopted our new young pup, Charlie, from the Santa Monica Animal Shelter. He was ID'd as a 2 month old, male, rat terrier mix and he won us over from the first moment we saw him. We had been discussing getting a dog for as long as I can remember, having grown up with dogs, we are both dog-lovers and it has pretty much been an inevitable that we would eventually bring one into our home. For the past year we had been visiting the West LA shelter almost weekly, having made the decision a while back that we would prefer to adopt an animal in need of a home rather than buying one from a breeder, but we had our hearts set on adopting a puppy so that we could train him or her from the get-go.

As anyone who has visited an animal shelter will know, puppies tend to be few and far between, and even then they tend to be a larger breed. As apartment dwellers we felt it wouldn't be fair to adopt a large dog simply as a matter of space necessity and so although we knew it would be a rare find, we continued to visit the shelters in hopes of finding a small breed puppy. On August 9th, having been tipped off by an acquaintance about the location we decided to pay a visit to the shelter in Santa Monica and there at the end of the short row of kennels he sat, a tan and white fluffball of cuteness.

Upon inquiring on his availability we were informed that he would be under a waiting period until the following Monday and that there was already a list of people to adopt him three names deep. At that we figured there wasn't a chance he wouldn't be snapped up, but the woman was quick to point out that most people who chose to put their names in have a tendency at no-show, so half-heartedly we put our names down as fourth in line to adopt and showed up at 8am on Monday morning on the very off chance we might be the only ones there. And I'll be damned, we were.

The two weeks following have been a blur, Charlie, as we spontaneously named him, was swooped off to the vet to be neutered (a requirement of the shelter) and then at 6pm that evening we suddenly found ourselves at home with a two-month old puppy and a whole lot of questions. What should we feed him? Should we paper-train or not paper-train? What should we do with him during the day when we are at work? And as the days have rolled forward we have quickly found ourselves asking more questions and having fewer answers.