But that set the stage. Less than a week later, the pound made a
litter of five four month old puppies available for adoption.
Marcy adoped the male, Jeb, right away. As always, I was checking
the web site almost daily and looked through the photos of the
pups. None of them aroused any interest in me at all until I saw
photos of a sweet, scared looking tan puppy with beautiful husky
markings on the face. I went to meet her on a Thursday
afternoon. As I stepped into the kennel area, I could see the
puppies off the right and immediately spotted "Tauri" at the very
end. As soon as she saw me she put her little puppy paws up on
the chain link door and wiggled with excitement. I passed by her
siblings with hardly a glance and was met with uncontained enthusiasm
and kisses when I greeted my future dog. Ironically, she behaved
exactly opposite from the way that Nigel behaved when I met him (who,
alone among the many dogs at the pound that day, sat quietly inside his
kennel without barking or jumping up). But I wasn't looking for
that this time; I was looking for a dog to pick me, and I couldn't have
choreagraphed a warmer greeting. In the meantime, her three
sisters sat quietly in their kennels.
I went back to get a greeting room for us and soon got to play with
her. Of course she was bouncing with energy and full of puppy
enthusiasm, but after about fifteen minutes she came over where I was
sitting on the floor, draped a leg over my leg, and sat down next to
me. I thought it was a good sign! The next day I brought
Chris back with me and we both met with her, took her for a short walk
outside, and did a few personality tests, all of which were
positive. Then started the agonizing decision making
process. If only I could meet every other dog that would come up
for adoption in the next year! Then I could make a better
decision. What if my dog showed up the next week, after I'd
adopted this one already!? It was impossible to know. The
decision was painful, and brought up a lot of grief over Nigel, but the
next day I was back to the pound to sign the papers. On Tuesday
(which was Alaska Day and a state holiday) I picked up my new dog up
and we started our life together.
Cailey is pretty wonderful. She is a total handful (but in a
normal puppish sort of way), and is one of the smartest dogs I've ever
met. She takes to training astonishingly fast, is very sweet and
affectionate, loves to snuggle, is well socialized with other dogs, and
never
runs away to play with other dogs at the beach no matter how
enticing! She and her brother Jeb play together once or twice
week and Marcy and I are delighted to raise our second dogs
together. She wrote in an email once, "Does it feel a little to
you like someone took Nigel and Cavall and shook them up together and
made puppies?" Jeb and Cailey are a wonderful amalgamation of our
two former dogs, and lots more.
We know from the pound that the puppies were born on a sailboat in
Aurora Harbor to, perhaps, a pit bull mother and husky father (both of
which can mean a lot of things). After two and a half months
of hearty speculation, Marcy and I finally met a lady at Sandy Beach
who recognized the puppies and told us about the parents. Their
mother is a pit bull (probably American pit bull terrier (APBT), and
probably pure-bred, though she wasn't sure) of Cailey's
coloration. Their father is an Alaskan husky from up on the ice
field who was a tender six months old when he bred their mother.
Marcy and I had DNA testa performed for both puppies, but they came out
suspiciously disimilar. Cailey's test showed a maternal
great-grandparent as an American Staffordshire terrier (APBTs are not
among the breeds on the panel we used, so this was pretty close) and
one of her paternal great-grandparents as a catahoula leopard
dog. "In the mix" was Siberian husky and several other spitz-type
breeds, but there was no more resolution than that. Jeb's test
from the same company showed mom as a pure bred American bulldog and
dad as half Siberian husky/half basset hound! Alaskan huskies can
have just about any ancestry, but it seemed unlikely that a basset
hound would be around to breed one of the sled dogs. We hope to
meet one or both parents in the near future.
Below are some photos of Cailey, who is starting to grow up out of the
craziness of early puppihood. I can't wait
until the spring when she becomes a boat dog!
I'd
been dogless for about five months, including most of a summer, when I
began casually checking the Gastineau Humane Society web site for
potential new dogs. The worst of the grief over Nigel's death had
passed and adventuring without a dog over the summer was becoming
intolerable. It was time to start looking. My parameters
were few: I wanted a young dog (less than a year old) but not
necessarily a puppy puppy, a dog that was born after Nigel died, a
reasonably large dog, and a mutt, preferably one with some husky
ancestry. I wasn't in any particular hurry, but I wanted to make
sure that when my dog showed up at the pound, I was there to adopt
it. After a couple of monthsI was getting disheartened by the
dominance of pure breds and small dogs at the pound--where were all the
young mutts I saw when I adopted Nigel? I even looked for
potential dogs in Anchorage (and was quickly overwhelmed). The
dam finally burst in early October when a two month old pitt bull/lab
mix showed up; although I wasn't interested in the dog myself, I passed
the information on to Marcy, who'd lost Cavall (Nigel's best friend) in
August. She and her partner immediately abandoned their intent to
wait a considerable time before their next dog, and hurried to meet the
puppy; unfortunately, it had already been adopted. 
