The Rocky Road to Ripley

The dogs on their first night
in Pittsburgh - tuckered out!

By the time we came east, my pack of eight was down to four old souls.  Having all been young together, they were now all aging together, and the time I had always known I would need to brace myself for was happening: heartbreak seemed to have settled in for a nice long stay.  We had suffered unimaginable loss in our human family, so one might reasonably think that losing all those pets in a rather steady stream would pale in comparison, but it doesn't really.  Losing a pet is a special kind of painful.  I've written about this before so I won't belabor it here, but I'll sum it up to say what I often say to commiserate when someone I know loses a pet: no one loves you like your dog. Dog lovers who read this will understand.  For anyone else, you'll need to take it on faith.

I've been asked the fair question, "So why get another dog and just prime yourself to go through it again?"  Well, because for all that pain, there were years of love and joy to treasure before that.  I have always taken my comfort in knowing that I gave my dogs what they really wanted most, love and companionship.  They returned it and then some, so why would I turn my back on receiving that kind of love and acceptance in my life again?  Even when I was at the full-to-bursting eight, that was true of each of them.

But, there's some old saying about when a door closes somewhere, a window opens up somewhere else, and there began to be this window of opportunity to finally fulfill the nearly lifelong dream of having a true collie.  My real life Lassie or Lad.

This is the window of opportunity I was looking for

Well, so how does one make that happen?

I had been a shelter volunteer off and on back in Texas, and all my dogs had been "rescued" in some form of fashion - even if that was just as simple as picking them up off a construction site where they were living on workers' garbage.  I assumed I would stay true to that.  I knew there were breed specific rescue groups, so I further assumed, in an eastern state where so many other populous states are an easy drive away, including New York and Virginia, that it would be easy.

Remember the other famous saying?  The one about assuming?

Yeah, that's the one.

I wasn't exactly rejected outright (that would come later) , but I was ignored in some cases where my application fell into a black hole somewhere, and I never received a response.  One time when I followed up, I received a rather abrupt email reminding me that they were all volunteers and would get to it when they had the time - apparently they never found that time, but I learned to tread softly after that, realizing that any hope I had with that particular group just vanished.  Or, often in that first go round, I was told this group or that group did not adopt to anyone from out of state.  That seems reasonable enough probably, but to someone who spent the last 30 years in Texas and before that Montana where "in state" is a pretty vast concept, a group in Ohio telling me I'm disqualified because I live in Pennsylvania seemed laughable.

Before anyone who may read this and happens to volunteer for one of those many noble groups becomes offended, let me just say:  I get it.  You're committed to doing home visits because you're committed to making sure the dogs, many of whom are traumatized to begin with by the reason they landed in a rescue situation, have the best home possible to live out their days.  And to ask a volunteer to drive 100 miles for a 30 minute visit is unreasonable.  I do seriously get it.  Yet, I would ask that you try looking at it from the flip side of the coin.  If you're committed to wanting to rescue, but have your heart set on a specific breed, where are you left to turn?  Does your geography just doom you?  Or, alternatively, send you to a breeder?

The story of my life...

The easy answer would have been to go through a collie rescue group based in Pennsylvania.  If there is one, I never found it.  So, I learned early on that there were a few main collie rescue groups on this side of the country that seemingly controlled most of the potential adoptees, but it was not going to be through them in all likelihood that I realized my dream.

Of course, I was trolling shelters as well.  Problem with shelters is that purebred dogs will occasionally land there, having gotten lost or having had an owner die or become too ill to continue to care for them, but they don't stay long.   It becomes a race, and I was never a racer by nature.  I was always a day late and a dollar short, as my Dad would have said.

You may next reasonably ask why I didn't throw in the towel and just rescue one of the many wonderful mixed breed dogs that are in the local shelters.  Pittsburgh shelters, as I'm sure many city shelters are, are full of pit bull or pit bull mixes.  Along with, of course, an array of other lovable mutts.  I'm not put off by pits; far from it.  But, here's the thing:  I had taken in anything and everything that needed me over the last two plus decades, having never given up the hope and dream of having a collie.  And I knew - I could see their faces out there on the Internet - there were collies who needed homes.  I felt - and feel - that it was not wrong nor unreasonable to finally be allowed to achieve a childhood dream.

And since I'm just chalk full of old sayings today, they also say that good things come to those who wait.