Man's Best Friend

My Mum has recently been on the lookout to buy a dog. Our dear Jacob passed away early this year and now she is looking for new companionship - something I can completely understand.
Because my Mum works awkward, generally long hours it''s not very sensible for her to get a puppy - she simply isn't about to train it properly. So that means she is looking at older dogs and rescue homes seem to be the way to go. I've been going along with her, my birthday gift to her is to help with the purchase (I like to protect my investments hehe, which translates to telling my Mum not to get a "yappy" Yorkshire Terrier-type dog.

We've pretty much visited every rescue home in North Shropshire and seen many a dog. You may (or may not) be surprised at how many Staffys (Staffordshire Terrier) or Staffy-cross dogs there are. A lot of the dogs we saw have been large and the ones that my Mum has been interested in cannot be separated from their sibling, or people at the rescue home strongly suggesting that she couldn't (or shouldn't) leave a dog on their own for 8 hours. Sounds like a bit of cock to me, true some dogs will chew up the place out of boredom but our belief is the people at these rescue homes only say these things as they don't want people returning the dogs after a week or so when it doesn't work out.

One place we visited had 2 springer spaniel brothers, which luckily could be separated but unfortunately they've never been inside a house and therefore have not been house-trained. I'm sure they would eventually adjust but my Mum doesn't have the time unfortunately to ensure a smooth transition. My Mum is ideally after a dog and not a bitch, she doesn't want to have to deal with a bitch being on season and all that. We saw this beautiful Corgi-cross at the last place we visited but as it turned out, it was a she and couldn't be separated from her sister. My Mum did talk the talk about having 2 small dogs but I kept pointing out the obvious that that she would have to feed 2 dogs, walk 2 dogs, look after and watch 2 dogs.
The crazy thing when you visit these places can be the continuous ear-deafening barking. In the smaller homes, the dogs have their own runs/cages but it seems because they can see each other, they often bark at each other, especially when someone in present. I'm convinced that it's the case of the odd bad apple and then the other dogs barking only because others are barking. When it's like this, it's difficult to gauge how loud the dog would be in your own home. A lot of the dogs are very friendly, coming up to the bas and very keen to lick the fingers you put through the bars even when you're not supposed to. A couple are genuinely aggressive, one which went for me, treaded on their water bowl and kicked up a load of water all over me - suffice to say we weren't going to adopt that one...
In other places, like the Dogs Trust, the runs were set up so the dogs couldn't really see each other and there was no barking at all. They were also playing classical music which I joked that the dogs at the other places were just pissed at the pop music har-de-har!

It's really bad to visit these places in one way. I now would love to own a dog of my own. I am of course a renter so that generally means no pets - I also live on the 2nd floor and have no garden to speak of, so it would be pretty tough to have a dog right now. There were several dogs I saw that I liked the look of and if I really could I would probably have tried to adopt there and then. I've noticed that a lot of dogs I liked were scruffy looking terrier-type dogs - not sure what that says about me, but the longer coat looks pretty cool if you ask me.

Anyways, thanks to my family, I've been a Dog person all my life, and am almost certainly destined to have my own dog at some point - it's only a matter of time and circumstance.

Here's looking for a best friend...