Amber Comes for a Visit

Presidents Day is a great holiday. Well, at least was this year. Amber called on Saturday morning and told me she got called off work for the day and she decided she was going to jump in her car and drive home for the long weekend. Santa Cruz is an excellent place for college. It's just far enough away so Amber feels like she went away for college, but it's close enough for an easy one day drive. It may be a long drive, but is still close enough for a weekend trip.
Amber called her boyfriend to see if he would go with her to help drive and he was up for the trip. Josh is a great guy. His sister lives in Santa Monica so they stayed there the first night (after first dropping by our house to say hi) and spent the night with us the second night.

Amber has decided she wants a dog. She is a huge animal lover and enjoys all the stuff most people don’t like about having a dog – walking, brushing, training, etc. (However, I think she is on board with the rest of us about not liking the poop patrol.) The animal shelters in the Santa Cruz and San Jose area are expensive; dogs cost $175. The shelters in Ventura and LA counties sell there dogs for $90 and they were having a half off special over the weekend – any dog for $45.

So we spent Sunday driving around to al the different shelters on Sunday. Dog shelters are noisy, smelly and kind of sad, but any day with the daughter you only get to see a few times a year is a fun day. Unfortunately for Amber, the half-off sell was a huge success. Most of the shelters sold a good portion of their dogs on Saturday so unless you were interested in a pit bull there weren’t very many dogs to choose from.

At the last shelter we visited there was a little dog that Amber fell in love with. On the front of each dog cage there is a little card with basic information about the dog. In the right, bottom corner there is a color code: blue for sick dog and yellow indicating behavioral problems. The dog Amber liked was marked yellow. We asked one of the people working at the shelter about it and she told us the dog was super scared of people. We took the dog out of the cage so we could see how it would get along with Amber.

It took a while, but it really started to warm up to Amber. Eventually, it even leaned over on Amber’s lap. The dog was found as a stray. Another family purchased the dog from the shelter even though they told the family that the dog was super shy, would be tons of work, needed extra TLC, and could bite in fear. After about a month they gave up and returned the dog. Amber was falling in love with the dog but hearing that someone else had already tried and failed to “fix” it was discouraging.

This dog would be a major project and while Amber would definitely be up the job, she also had to think about her roommates. Would they be up for it? Also, with both work and school, Amber is a very busy girl and this dog would require a lot of her time. So while it took Amber a long time to make her decision, she finally decided not to take the dog home.

The next morning as Amber was getting ready to leave for the drive back home I could tell she was still thinking about the dog. I think she made the right decision, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she comes back down for a visit soon and returns home with an extra passenger.