Roxy’s
363 days of change / Sylvia Rocek
even though she wouldn’t love me back for many, many weeks. 24-hours later, A1068471 “Baby Girl” became Roxy, and all the reasons to not get a dog seemed less like obstacles and more like excuses. Here is my sweet Roxy‘s first year by the numbers:
One year ago I decided to foster a dog from An�al Care and Prote�ive Services (ACPS) for the long Thanksgiving
weekend. We’d talked forever about getting a dog, but it was never the right time. I figured fostering over a long weekend would be a good thing, since it got the dog out of the shelter for a few days, and we could have a dog for a few days. I walked through the doors at ACPS and said, I’ll take the dog that has been here the longest. They brought me this big dog who looked like she didn’t care whether she went home with me or not. You know those pictures of “Dogs on their way to their forever home from the shelter,” and all the dogs are smiling and happy? That was not the kind of dog I got. My dog was shut down. She wasn’t happy, she wasn’t angry, this was just something else that was happening to her, possibly something else she would have to endure. She didn’t know. She was 65 pounds (up from the 43 pounds when she was confiscated covered in fleas, filth, wounds, and HW+) She was brought into a shelter that fed her, medicated her, and cleaned her up, but was full of dogs she didn’t know, and didn’t like, that barked, which made her bark. Who wants to foster/adopt a big HW + pup who does not care for other dogs and seemed to bark all the time? No one . For seven months, no one wanted to adopt or foster her. I drove her home in my two-seat truck, yammering on and on the whole time about how I was super happy she was coming to visit, and how much fun we were going to have, while she stared stoically out the window. It took the short length of the ride from the shelter to our home for me to fall in love with her,
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# of days she has lived with us: 363 # of years old she is: 6 (based on ACPS best guess) # of times she accidentally got away from us in the first 3 days: 4 (including a car chase to get her back) # of times she has barked while inside the house: 4 (3 times in the middle of the night, one bark,
no clear reason other than to scare the crap outta of me)
# of months it took till she was no longer terrified of the television: 6 # of miles we have walked: 600ish # of nemeses she has acquired: 4 # of cats she has tried to eat: 16 # of times I have pried her jaws open to pull out a chicken bone: 7 (there’s actually a disturbing number of chicken bones laying around Avondale)
# of times someone in a car has pointed and laughed as she flailed about on her back, happy as a clam, in the grass like she was having a seizure: 2 # of people she has barked at and scared the crap out of: 2 # of times I felt bad about that: 1 # of kisses I have given her: 5 million She takes up way too much room in the bed, has no social skills, leaves her toys all over the house, loves Jeff WAY more than she loves me, expects me to give her the last bite of whatever I am eating even when I tell her its “not for puppies,” and based on what I sweep up constantly, is comprised of mostly dirt and hair. She’s the best. • Submitted via Facebook.com/unleashjax
