Thanks for all the good-luck waves–it looks like things are going to work out with our “opportunity,” namely, we are on our way to adopting a very sweet dog! I am very excited–he is surprisingly mellow for his breed, housebroken, not much of a barker, and generally just a very lovable fellow.
Of course, because this is ME, I am up at 4:30 in the morning thinking about it.
I am worried, mostly, about leaving him home during the day for stretches of time. He’s not a puppy (in fact, he’s nearly middle-aged), so my concern isn’t about potty training or destructive behavior. But I am concerned about him getting bored or lonely or sad. And I know that thinking about my potential schedule for this fall isn’t terribly fruitful–it’s not going to be a normal schedule, and will only last for one semester–but still, I worry.
I know that millions of Americans have dogs that they love who stay home all day and do just fine. So why am I so worried about our potential baby? That’s pretty much what he does now, is stay home all day. And even for this fall, there would only be one day, potentially, that he’d be home alone for a longer stretch. But how long is too long of a stretch? Some websites say 5 hours alone is too much for a dog, particularly if he’s crated. What if he’s not crated, but confined to a certain room in the house?
I have wanted to get a dog for the longest time, and this particular opportunity is almost so perfect it’s fate–the owner travels too much to take care of the dog properly and needs to find him a good home, he was just on the verge of calling the local breed rescue organization when I called him in response to an email a friend forwarded to me, the dog himself is so wonderful and obviously well-loved and treated (and he travels well), he’s an adult dog, which is what we wanted to get . . . the list goes on and on. But now, faced with bringing him home, I am so worried that we won’t be good enough for him. I worry that we will be bad dog owners. Unfounded though this worry may be, it is completely consuming me.
[Come to think of it, I’ve been very obsessive over little things like this lately, so I worry also that I’m becoming sort of neurotic. Still, isn’t it marginally better for me to be up in the middle of the night worrying about whether we’ll be good dog owners than whether or not our paint will look good?]
So the good luck waves worked–he’s a good dog, he’s trained and so sweet, the owner seems to like us and approve of us taking his baby, so it’s really just a matter of turning in a pet deposit and bringing him home (maybe for a short trial, over a weekend, if the owner is willing). No major glitches so far. Keep up the waves, though, for my mental health, if nothing else.
