Longest Saturday Ever

Yesterday was the “longest Saturday ever”.

We left our house at 9:00am. Stopped at the bagel store for breakfast and drove to an animal shelter. We have been thinking about adding a dog to our family for a long time now. A shelter about 45 minutes away had just received a large group of puppies from the South 50 puppies! We had looked online and Ally really liked an older dog.

We got to the shelter at 945 – it opened at 10am and there were already 40 people or so in line! Ugh thought Becky and I. But we waited, and Ally picked out this older dog, he was small, only 13 pounds, 8 years old. We had to wait 90 minutes to meet him. We waited and Ally was so patient. She kept going back to stand in front of his cage. It was finally our turn, and we met him, he was nice at first, very mellow no barking. But Ally went to pick him up again (yes we had all picked him up and held him in our laps) but he growled and nipped at Ally. She was fine – but scared. That was it – no dog for us. We made it out of the shelter before the tears started.

In the car we talked about how he was not the one for our family. We had talked at length before we visited the shelter that we probably would not get a dog – but maybe we might. Ally and I really want a pug dog. But we all agreed we should see if we could find a good dog for our family at a shelter before we looked for a pug. So Ally understood that this dog was not the right one for us. We told her that now we would get a pug. Becky and I had talked the night before and decided if there was no dog at the shelter that day we would begin the breeder search.

But oh it was a long drive back towards our house. Ally was so sad. She knew we couldn’t take the dog, but she was sad that he had to stay the shelter where he was so sad and scared and unhappy. Oh my heart ached for my empathetic daughter. It can be so hard to understand something but still not like it. She fell asleep holding my hand in the car. As  we drove towards home, Becky  and I agreed we needed to do something to brighten the day.

We stopped for lunch at a burger place and then visited Lego Land.

 

When we told Ally the day before that we were planning a trip to the animal shelter she was super excited. And had all kinds of questions. Through out the afternoon and evening she would say “I have a question….” right before bed she picked out her clothes to get dressed in the morning. She didn’t want us leaving late. She was so adorable and so patient. It made the whole experience even more heart breaking for Becky and I. But we do feel it was a good experience, and we feel we tried hard at a shelter dog (this is our 2nd attempt at a rescue dog – we had one for a few weeks before we had Ally and had to give him back when he bit Becky.) So we feel its time for a puppy from someplace where we know what the puppy’s life has been before us.

The giant giraffe outside was cool and the Fenway park replica made out of Legos!

We watched a 4-D Lego movie, Ally made a pressed penny as a souvenir.

We posed for pictures in front of neat Lego figurines.

Becky and I were not thrilled with the place, but it was a great thing for us to do to turn our day around and make new fun memories of the Saturday.

We got home at 630pm and spent the next hour before bed with Ally looking at pug pictures and making some inquiries about a puppy. If anyone who reads this knows of any pug puppies please let us know.