I know, this is a little late, but I didn’t forget. Honest.

To celebrate this important event, Diane and I made a 5-hour round-trip to Albany, Oregon on Sunday to visit a little dog she found on the internet. We lost our last fuzzy family member a couple of years ago and she thought it was OK to look for another. I can’t call the new one a replacement because that’s hard to do. Dogs are different from each other in so many ways so you can’t just pick randomly. She’s been checking various animal shelters every day for a few months now so I knew this was coming. When she saw the photo of Max on one of her web sites it was a done deal before the adoption process was even considered.

After submitting answers to an incredibly complex questionnaire, I had no doubt we’d be making a trip somewhere soon. That was late last week. She got the call on Saturday to drive to Albany, Oregon for a visit with Max. Nothing wrong with a road trip. We’ve driven over 3 hours to destinations that were less important than this one.

The rendezvous location was at a Petco store, a public venue where random spies and snipers would have difficulty singling us out to prohibit a successful adoption . . .

Sorry. I’ve been reading a lot of spy stuff lately and it seems to have seeped into my unconscious thought process. Let me regroup a little.

It was a beautiful day for a ride and it was easy for me I’m just a passenger as I no doubt have explained many times before. I’m not allowed to drive, ever, when we go somewhere together, or I go alone, or if the weather is extremely bad. Like lots of rain, snow, stuff like that. I always find it humorous that she trusts me to drive in bad weather. At the same time, I’m honored that she trusts me in situations like that.

We arrived early for the meeting so turned back to visit a KFC we’d seen not fr away. We almost made it a whole block before spying an Arby’s, a place we like, but rarely get to visit. So KFC lost out to Arby’s. We ate our sandwiches then returned to the store to spend the next 25 minutes anticipating the meeting. You know, like, what if Max didn’t like one of us. Would we need to live separately to appease his fickle notions? Would he like us both, but one more than the other? That would create tension on the homefront, right? None of these possibilities were discussed because it was all in my head. Diane was pretty sure he was going to be great. She knew this as soon as she saw Max’s photo. She swiped ‘right’ for sure.

After visiting all the fish in the store, who were looking for a home, about a dozen times, we went to the car and sat there with the engine running so we could be air conditioned. Did I mention that the temp was in the high 90’s in Albany? Very warm. Not comfortable enough to be standing around on tired feet.

Finally the Foster Mom showed up and I recognized Max immediately. Diane had shown me the photo and I have to admit he was pretty hard to pass up.

We followed them into the store and approached with totally unnecessary caution. We didn’t want to scare Max, or seem to eager to take him home in case he found something wrong with us. Turns out he’s a totally nonjudgmental people person and climbed right into Diane’s arms. The ended the interview process.

While Diane took care of the necessary paperwork I trotted Max around the store, teaching him new tricks, then we stuffed him into our car and headed north. Turns out that riding in cars is one of his favorite pastimes. Just like driving cars is Diane’s favorite pastime. They were obviously made for each other.

Although it’s only been a few days since he appeared in our lives things have perked up around here. Being a kept man, it’s my job to take him for walks. Actually, one of Diane’s motives for getting him was to serve as one of my exercise machines that require a lot of walking. The other one is my walk behind mower. The difference is that I can control the speed of the mower, but not Max. He thinks it’s his job to stretch the leash to the breaking point or it isn’t fun. So far, as we’ve made the circuit around our block, he’s anointed every telephone pole and all but 3 of the brown yard debris containers people leave out, and there’re a lot of them.

Now, let’s talk about the water issue. He kinda loves it and seems very pleased that a creek is running through his new back yard. He also loves mud puddles. Being mostly white, that’s a problem solved by a quick rinse in the creek. He doesn’t just walk through the puddles. No, he stops, turns around 3 times, then lays down ensuring he gets the majority of his little body covered in whatever lives in puddles. Then I take him to the creek where he wades out far enough to cover about half his height, then he lays down, facing upstream, leisurely lapping the water headed his way. Thankfully, he rinses off nicely. That’ good because our chosen pet groomer can’t see him for another month or so. By then, he’s going to be a mess.

As you can see he’s very busy. What you don’t see is how fast he can run. He’s like the wind and likes to run willy nilly around the yard seeing how close he can come to people before dodging away to make another circuit. There’s no photo of this activity yet because we’re never ready for it. This is what he looks like when he’s done.

Then we go inside and he does a lot of this.

Then we go back outside and do it again.

You’d think it would get boring pretty quick but so far it hasn’t. He’s fun and funny and he’s our new family member. The proper name is Maximillian which looks better on paper but he’ll only ever be called Max. That’s who he is. I’m sure he’ll be appearing in future posts.

Time to stop, so I will.