It Takes a Village to Raise McIver

Mamma Heartbeat here...

So I am officially INSANE. McIver is with us right now. We LOVE this dog and so does our pack.

The situation is that DFA has been building facilities on our director's land. When the projects are completed, she deeds the land to DFA- a non-profit. As a result, her actual house has been the last to be constructed. She has just sorta resided in the buildings while everything was proceeding. By the way, this is part of transitioning from Dogs for Disabled to DFA. So right now, our devoted and half-crazy director is living in an RV with 7 dogs. It's not quite as bad as it sounds because the DFA properties include kennels and many dog-friendly facilities. BUT it has essentially driven her to the "brink".

Most of the dogs that don't make the "cut" for service are easily adopted out. We don't sell them. However, we will happily accept a donation to the program. Furthermore, if the adoption doesn't work, they come back to DFA. Very rarely, because of our breed lines, do we get a dog like McIver. BUT that is one of the issues with breeding for service. DFA does not want to contribute to pet overpopulation. As soon as we know a dog will not become part of our breeding line, he/she is altered. In fact, we promote responsible pet ownership in every way we know. We have taken in strays that are abandoned in the country and trained them to be therapy dogs. These dogs now live with professional therapists and help children every day. When a dog is born into or adopted into DFA, he or she is ours for life. End of story.

McIver is such a particular boy, he has only bonded with about 5 people in his life. My husband and I happen to be 2 of them. So he is very limited as to who can take him. When we adopted him out the first time, his adopter spent many days with our director just feeding him hot dogs and bonding over obedience commands. So McIver will be with us. We have been guaranteed free boarding and we already get a good deal on bulk dog food through DFA.

Bottom line is that we got him when he was 12 weeks old, trained him and made the very difficult decision that he should be released from the service program. We feel very responsible for him. He's part of our pack no matter how much I didn't want to be the crazy woman with 4 dogs.

And my husband is the most amazing man in the world. He knows he has married a country girl stuck in the city. His first clue was when I said I wanted a goat! I wear a suit and heels M-F from 8 to 5 and literally play in the dirt the other time. When I called him in a panic yesterday, he said, "okay, we'll get him tonight."

Thanks dear blog friends for listening to me freak out!

Mamma Heartbeat

PeeS- my camera battery was dead last night!