Hand-me downs

We had just moved into our forever home me and my husband and our two children. We had been living with my parents for the last 6 months with an addition of our two ginormous orange tabbies. So we were stretching out and getting comfortable in our new home. My sister and her husband who is in the Marines had just got a new duty station in Georgia and would have to move with their own family which included a handsome 3 year old golden retriever mix, Bo. He was sweet and great with kids but they couldn't take him, the new place they were staying didn't allow animals and my sister had become allergic. The kids were heart broken but their grandmother was going to take him. She has a house out in the country were he could run and play all day. Freedom compared to the fenced in back yard of their house in North Carolina. However after about a month or so Grandma was going down to Georgia for a 2 weeks to stay and asked if we would keep Bo while she was gone. We are not dog people. I know you know what I mean when I say that. We have cats and I had no desire to have a dog. I agreed anyways to keep him while she was gone. She brought over his bowl, leash, bag of food and his crate. As she handed off his things she jokingly said "you know you can keep him if you want". We laughed it off and she explained his routine and that he was an outside dog and would sleep in the crate in the shed. We have a large workshop that we set him up in and would let him out in morning and back in for bed time. He was a good dog, he didn't get in to anything and he loved the kids. Soon the end of week 2 came and no Grandma. No phone call to ask to drop him off or for her to come pick him up. We didn't think anything of it, she didn't have job to get back to so we assumed she hadn't gotten back yet and had decided to stay longer with the family. That wasn't the case, she had made it back and just assumed we would keep him. After week 4 rolled around I called my sister and asked if her mother-in-law was going to come get him. She sounded surprised and replied that she was told we wanted to keep him. I was taken aback and let her know that it was not the case and that no one had talked to us about keeping him aside from a joke made at drop off.

After speaking to my husband we came to the decision to keep him. The kids had gotten attached and he was a good dog the only real test was introducing him to the fat cats. That in it's self was quite the interaction. He came in super excited and as soon as the cats got his sent they were after him, and Bo is a nice size dog, but he climbed up to the top of the couch trying to get away from the swats and hisses of our boys. They chased him right back out the door. In a short amount of time we brought his crate in and set him up his own little space and kept him in the crate when he was inside until we could trust the cats wouldn't attack him. He was really docile and shy and quite terrified of the cats. I remember the first time I found him sitting with his nose in the corner like a scorned child with one of my fat boys sitting behind him just watching him. It has been almost 5 years now and him and the cats tolerate each other, but he wont fight back. He is still a sweet boy who loves and craves attention from who ever will give it to him. He will hear us call the cats and come running to join in whatever shenanigan's we are up to or if he is going to get a treat out of the venture. Bo fits well into the family now even though I'm still not a dog person, he's our baby. We call him the hand-me-down pup.