How we almost ended up with a dog named Candice, or, the sweet taste of freedom

On Saturday, Jeremy and I went out to run a few errands. On our way out the front door, Garlock made his extreme dissatisfaction with being left at home known, putting up a solid fight against staying inside. In the end, because he’s the dog, we won. Or so we thought.


Fast forward an hour and a half later, and we’re home. No Garlock meets us at the front door. No Garlock comes running in from the backyard.

Garlock?
Buddy?
Garlock!

Nothing.

Looking around the backyard, we find that a board from the fence is missing, and Garlock is no where to be found. The icing on this cake? We hadn’t put his collar on him yet that morning, so he’s out without tags. ‘Cause a Garlock with no tags isn’t going to terrify some random stranger. Nope, not at all.

As we took off in different directions down the street, calling his name, our immediate neighbor comes outside, and waves down Jeremy. Turns out, his sister had seen a black dog wandering in our front yard. He was so friendly, came right up to her, started giving her kisses (sounds like our ferocious man-killer, don’t it?). She, thinking he was lost, decided to take him to the pound. Since Garlock assumes everyone is his best friend and loves going for car rides, he jumped right in! Adventure!

We then took off for the pound and sure enough, kennel 63 – Garlock. Seems once he ended up in a cage in a row of much bigger, barking dogs, it wasn’t such an adventure anymore. While waiting for the animal shelter volunteers to open his cage (it was a busy day that day), I wandered up and down the aisle, and met Candice - who, had we a secure pool & backyard fence, would’ve come home with us that day. Seems Candice loves having her belly rubbed. She loves this so much that she walked her front legs all of the way up the door of her cage in order to give me full access, peppering me with kisses between rubbings. But, since we’re not ready for another dog just yet, I left her behind, hoping that she'll be adopted soon. I looked up her picture online:


PS – After discussing it further, we decided that the best approach for another dog was to stick with another staffy. Candice, who was one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever met, is just too big for what we want. But I sure hope that she finds a good home soon. Thankfully, San Diego county shelters are all no-kill shelters.

PPS – Micro chipping your dog pays off. Within 5 minutes of being dropped off at the shelter, they’d scanned Garlock’s chip, and called Jeremy to let him know they had him.

PPPS – Shelter employees and volunteers do good work. Support your local animal shelter.

This is Brooklyn. She has nothing to do with this story, just happened to walk by when I was trying to take Garlock's picture.