My Dog - Part 1

I never talked about my Dog.  This is a super long story, so it will probably be broken up into a few posts.

It all started with my boyfriend, C, trying to get me the perfect Christmas Present. He is a perfectionist when it comes to getting me gifts.  For my birthday, he bought me a watch, and took me to an AMAZING fondu restaurant.  When we got to the restaurant, I saw a beautiful "centerpiece" and didn't realize they were flowers for me until I saw the card.  At that point, I told C there was no way he could top my birthday.  (Let's just say I haven't dated very many thoughtful guys)  C told me he could top my birthday, and he was going to.  So when Christmas came, and he said "I'm going to get you a dog for Christmas," I was SUPER excited!

We spent our "Stay at Home Weekend" looking for dogs, when we were supposed to lock the doors and watch movies all day.  We both had spent an annoyingly busy summer and fall, and had to start scheduling "Do nothing weekends" in order to have some time at home.  C offered up his weekend so we could find a dog.

Over the whole week, I researched dogs and tried to find out what kind of dog I wanted.  This was my list:
1 year or older
Female
Short Hair - No shedding - Possibly Curly Hair
Low Energy
Approximately 50 lbs

I also spent the week trying to find rescues to visit.  My list was as follows.
Take the El to Dog Shelter 1, Walk to Shelter 2, El to shelter 3.  Take the El home, and Drive to the only Kill shelter on the list.  I wanted to get a dog at a Kill Shelter because that way I felt like we were actually saving a dog.  I thought that by going to the 3 shelters before, I could get an idea of what I wanted.

The night before we planned to go, it snowed.... a lot.  I decided that C and I would drive to all the shelters.  It was a good thing because I must have wrote down the wrong address because we couldn't find the first shelter.  The 2nd shelter happened to be the address for the doggy day care place where the shelter dogs frequent not an actual shelter.  That happens a lot in Chicago.  Since land is so expensive, a lot of the shelters have most (if not all) of their dogs in foster homes, and have "adoption events" at petco or something where they can be adopted out.  Unfortunately, I didn't know that.

The 3rd Shelter was a very popular No-Kill shelter in Chicago.  This was the first shelter we had been to that day, that actually had dogs.  I told C, I don't want to get a dog here, I want to get one from a kill shelter.  Unfortunately, that didn't happen... (To Be Continued)