Remember Violet, the dog we wanted to adopt two weeks ago? Her owners returned her and Mr. Stubbs because the son for whom they got the dogs turned out to have massive allergies to animal hair. I happen to call the shelter Friday afternoon just after they'd been turned in. We showed up at noon today on the dot and adopted her.
Violet isn't her original name. The shelter gives all animals new names when they arrive if they don't know the old ones. They're partial to color names; thus we've met Red, Green, and Scarlett. We may opt to rename her, but I'm actually rather fond of the name Violet.
She is a real sweetie. She wants us to like her, and she comes to us for comfort. Naturally, she's a little anxious at the moment and tends to pace around, but she settled down on her sheepskin bed for a while this afternoon while Denise came by and we sat chatting on the sofa. She likes her yard a lot and has happily inspected every corner, eaten a bunch of new grass, pooped enormously, and sprawled like a frog in the shade with a big doggie grin on her face.
The only real problem so far is the interspecies mix. We tried introducing her (on a leash, of course) to Natasha and Keiko as carefully as possible in the house. It was not entirely successful. The dog got a bloody eyebrow out of it, and the cats are inclined to puff up like hairy balloons if she comes too close. So we put up the baby barrier on the stairway and left the cats upstairs. This way they can see but not touch one another and the cats know they're safe, which seems to be working.
It's only 7:30pm and I'm exhausted. We've been running around like maniacs trying to get our outdoor gate properly set up (the plywood warped and the hinges aren't fitting properly), running errands, trying to remember where all our dog-related items are that we put away when Dixie died, and working out how to have all the pets in the house at the same time. I think the dog will have to sleep in our room tonight with the door shut so the cats can have the run of the house and their litterbox.
If we can't sort out the relationship with the cats then we have 30 days to return Violet to the shelter. I don't think that'll happen. I have the highest hopes that we can convince everyone to live peacefully together, and in fact the cats normally like dogs so they aren't the problem. But I have a feeling it's going to be a very tiring process.
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