Trudy's Story

We've been thinking about getting another dog. We thought maybe March would be a good time to start looking and thinking about it. We've been going back and forth on whether we should adopt/rescue a dog or find a breeder. We knew we wanted a puppy, but weren't even sure what breed.
So, Thursday night, Becca and Chris stopped by and out of boredom, we looked at petfinder.com. There are so many dogs that need adopting - it's depressing. Anyway, we were just looking and most of them were already at least 4 - 8 months old. The "labs" weren't as cute as our Lu was, so I was being kind of snobby about it. Then we saw Trudy, or "Yuri" and she was called. She seemed so perfect, but we weren't looking for a dog now.
I put it out of my mind until Friday. When I checked to see if she was still there - she was. I filled out the 6 page application knowing that it was a complete long shot. They "don't adopt out puppies younger than 6 months to homes with children under the age of 7". And that's before they've even met Lila! I finished the application and made sure Ryan was ready, just in case it happened. The foster mom emailed me Friday night and said she just had to talk to my vet in the morning and then we were approved! Wow! We were really getting a puppy - on Sunday!!!

The agency we got her from rescues pregnant dogs from kill shelters, puts them in foster homes to have their litters, then adopts them out. Trudy's mom (a beautiful chocolate lab) was only 8 months old. She was owned by a man in GA who also had an older male chocolate lab. He apparently used the dogs for hunting. When the female got pregnant by (we assume) his other dog, he dropped her off at the shelter. She would have been euthanized in 3 days, but the Delaware Maryland Puppy Rescue people found her and put her in a home in MD. There she had 9 puppies, weaned them, and was adopted by a vet tech who fell in love with her. There were over 80 applications for the litter and 1 family was taking 2 - until last week, when they decided to just take the male. That left Trudy while all the other applicants had already gotten dogs. We found her at the perfect time!
She is adorable! She's learning the ropes around here pretty quickly. She loves the girls and they, of course, love her! She's a pretty lucky girl to end up here, I must say. And we were lucky to find another beautiful lab, like our Luey, that was also a rescue. As Hannah Montana would say, "We got the best of both worlds!" (Lila's been singing that all day!)