"It's Only Temporary"

“It’s only going to be temporary, just until we can find him a permanent home,” said my wife JoDee.

“Yep, that is what has to happen, we can’t keep him,” I replied sternly. “This can’t be like last time,” I added.

I glanced over at her from the driver’s seat for a moment to gauge her response. This conversation had happened once before with two Persian strays that a neighbor had found. “Only until we can find them a home” had turned into two new additions to the herd. At that point we had had three cats a dog, an alligator, a tortoise, and some fish.

This was a little different though. This time we were helping a Great Dane that a Facebook friend had rescued from a dog breeder. He had a cyst that would require surgery, he was not altered, and was quite a bit underweight. The surgery for the cyst alone would be close to $1,000.

“We cannot keep him, we cannot afford the surgery,” was my response when JoDee first broached the topic of fostering.

While that was untrue, we COULD afford it, but it was an expense I did not particularly want to take on.

“I know, I know. It would only be fostering. Only until we find him a good home,” she said. “He needs us,” she added.

“He doesn’t need us, there are plenty of other people who can help,” I shot back.

“No there isn’t, and the person who has him now can’t keep him much longer.”

“Fine,” I sighed. I knew there was no sense in arguing. “But this can’t be like the cats. I mean it. We have plenty of pets as it is.”

My wife squealed with delight and assured me it would not be like the cats; it was only temporary.

What a sucker I was.

We pulled into the dog park near our house and our dog, Taylor, began to bark with excitement from the back seat. It always amused me how worked up she got when she realized we were going to the dog park as she had no interest in playing with other dogs. At best she tolerated their presence. That was another big concern I had; would Taylor get along with the new dog? Even temporary if they fought it was not going to work. We had agreed to have the two dogs meet at the dog park, neutral territory so to speak.

We spotted my wife’s friend easily, well more accurately the Great Dane was spotted easily as he towered over the other dogs. She had him on leash near the entrance.

We made our way over to them and was introduced to Zeke. Zeke was mostly black with splashes of white on his muzzle, face, and chest and the faintest bit of dapple could be seen on his hindquarters. It was very apparent he was under weight though, at that time he only weighted about 120 pounds. “Only” 120 pounds I thought to myself. I knew full grown adults who weighed only slightly more.

Zeke seemed to love us right away, something we would eventually learn applied to every single person he would meet. As soon as he was off leash, he bounded over to me and buried his head in my lap and leaned against me with most of his considerable weight, nearly knocking me over.

“Okay buddy”, I said while lightly pushing him away.

Undeterred, he ran over to JoDee and di the exact same thing. She indulged him for a while before pushing him back as well. It was then he noticed Taylor and immediately tried to play with her. I watched nervously, ready to swoop in and separate them if I saw the tell-tale signs of Taylor getting ready to nip at him. But the signs never came. She sniffed him a little then proceeded to ignore his playful bounding.

“Oh good, looks like they’ll be friends”, said my wife, ever the optimist.

“Probably, but we’ll see once they get back to house,” I replied.

We made some small talk with my wife’s friend before heading back to out car with Zeke in tow. Our car, being a midsized sedan was not exactly the most accommodating for a Dane and Taylor, who weighs in at a beefy 50lbs herself. A little tuffle broke out when Zeke sat on her, but that was understandable. They figured out an arrangement quickly that did not involve Zeke smothering Taylor.

Once we were home Zeke excitedly raced around the house, exploring his new, temporary home. He managed to terrify the cats despite ignoring them completely.

“They’ll be fine,” I thought to myself, at least Zeke’s not a chaser.

We took him out back to get some more energy out. Zeke shot across our yard at full speed, and back towards us again, then back across the yard nearly trampling Taylor in the process but gracefully leaping over her at the last second, much to her displeasure. This was what my wife informed was called the “zoomies” and it was quite a sight to see. This went on a few more times, and after he seemed to work it out of his system, he had noticeable limp in his back leg. I pointed it to my wife.

“Yeah, Danes are known for having bad hips and don’t usually live long,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Another reason this would only be temporary,” I thought to myself.

Later that evening JoDee and I had settled down to watch some TV in the living room. We a couple large size dog beds in the living room for the two dogs to lay on. Taylor knew us for the softies that we are and jumped onto the opposite side of the wrap around couch and made herself comfortable. After a while Zeke seemed to sense his opportunity and jumped up as well and before we could even react, he flopped himself into my lap and laid down.

“Oof, I guess this is happening,” I said to JoDee.

“Aw, he thinks he’s a lap dog,” she laughed.

Zeke, seeming to agree with her sighed a comically large sigh and shut his eyes.

“At least HE was comfortable,” I thought to myself. It was right then though that I knew Zeke was not going anywhere, he had found his forever home and we had found the next member of our little herd. But my wife did not necessarily need to know that right away.