Roxy the Rescue Poodle---How I Found Love Online and Adopted a Dog

This is a beginnings story, a true story, about Roxy the rescue poodle. Many are the warnings against looking for love online, but I took the risk. I first saw "Roxy" (under another name) on Petfinder.com.

Roxy has been in my home less than a week as I write this. I drove from Kentucky to South Carolina to pick up this little poodle from an animal rescue group nearly a week ago, about two weeks after I first found her online.

Roxy the wonder poodle

Roxy is a toy black-and-white poodle weighing not quite six pounds with unkempt matted fur, wax in her ears, tartar on her teeth, a stump of a tail, and a lump of protruding tissue on her belly from a hernia. She's wasn't housetrained, and she won't quite come to me yet when I call her. She is at least one or two years old, but no one seems to know her age for sure. She is shy when she first meets someone.

She is, in other words, a dog with a lot of potential.

My previous two poodles came to me as purebred, AKC (American Kennel Club) puppies. I loved them, and they were wonderful dogs. But Roxy is wonderful, too. There are so many unwanted dogs; according to the Humane Society of the United States, over four million dogs and cats are put down in U.S shelters each year. I decided this time to give a rescue dog a chance. Wow!-Bow Wow! ---That was a good decision. Roxy is a calm, loving dog.

A rescue poodle adoption process

Roxy's adoption process involved the completion of a four-page application that included phone numbers for two references, a friend and a relative; and a phone number for a reference from my last dog's veterinarian. A couple of local humane society volunteers made an appointment to stop by my house one evening to make sure I had a fenced-in backyard and a canine-suitable home. Roxy's adoption fee was $250 to defray some of the cost of her spay surgery, vaccinations and identification microchip implant.

"They don't do this much for the adoption of children!" a friend of mine laughed. I don't know about that, but AKC breeders in my experience don't check out prospective buyers to this extent. If you want to adopt a dog that has been neglected or mistreated in the past, though, it seems fair that the people (all volunteers, in my case) trying to place the dog try to make sure the furbaby is not being sent to an unsuitable home or worse.

A little poodle's uncertain past

Roxy came from a backyard breeder. She was spayed a couple of weeks after her rescue, so her whelping days are over. She is crate trained, although I suspect that the "training" involved nothing more than simply keeping her confined to a crate or kennel most of the time. One of the other three dogs taken in with Roxy had a broken jaw that was not set and failed to mend properly. Since there were horses on the property, the rescue group speculates that the dog was kicked by a horse at some time and never given medical attention.

I'm told Roxy was kept outside year round. Even in a warm-weather state like South Carolina, a petite six-pounder like Roxy was never meant to live outdoors.

She is shy around people at first, but Roxy is gentle and appreciative of everything you do for her. She will sniff the air when I sit down to eat, but she does not beg for table scraps. She seems satisfied with her kibble and an occasional "Greenie" treat or dog biscuit.

Roxy's housetraining is coming along quite well. Since she isn't a puppy, she doesn't need to "go" more than two or three times a day. She has learned the papered spot where she is to go and is already beginning to use it without prompting from me.

Like a Depression-era child used to receiving nothing more than a couple of oranges for Christmas, Roxy doesn't even know how to play with a squeaker toy---yet. But she is showing interest. She still, somehow, has a spirit about her that is clearly that of a typical fun-loving, playful poodle.

Roxy the poodle's promising future

In the next couple of weeks, Roxy will have a professional groomer bathe her, shape her coat, clean her ears and remove mats from her fur. A week after that, she will have a dental cleaning in a veterinarian's office to remove the tartar from her teeth. Although it doesn't seem likely she ever had attention paid to her teeth before, she does not object to my gently brushing her teeth with a finger brush for 30 seconds at a time. After the dental cleaning, having her teeth brushed will become part of Roxy's routine.

Roxy sleeps in a soft, warm bed at night now with her human. She is learning. She is adapting. She is home.

And for the first time since my last dog died, I feel that I am home as well.

Sources:

Petfinder.com

Roxy (the rescued poodle)

C.A.R.E. Web site---Cullen's Archangel Rescue, Inc.

The Humane Society of the United States Web site.