On Hunter

Sun, August 3, 2008 - 7:24 AM PST

Linda and I went to the Bellevue Humane Society yesterday to look at a dog, an 8 year old male beagle named Hunter. We figured since he was that old, he'd hopefully be pretty chill and have most of his bad habits trained out of him by then, and the description on the pound's website said that he was a really gentle dog that liked to be around people.

Thinking back to the last dog that I spent much time with, I was already comparing this dog to Benny - also a male beagle and probably the sweetest dog on the planet.

When we got to the adoption center, we found our way pretty quickly to Hunter and he seemed pretty eager to see us. He was pawing at the cage door and looking us right in the eye while wimpering. But as soon as he got out of the cage, he managed to get away from the volunteer and started running around the property. They chased him down pretty quickly and put him into a bigger cage where we could spend some time with him... but this didn't work out so well. He more or less spazzed out and ran around the cage avoiding us for half an hour, barking at other nearby dogs, pissing over everything, and generally not acting like he had any interest in people at all.

The only time he gave us any attention was when we were given some treats to feed to the dog. Oh yeah, and Hunter weighs about 35 pounds and they said he is on a diet and could stand to lose about 10 pounds. So we had a dog that needed to loose about a third of its body weight that wouldn't give a human the time of day unless he was being fed.

I felt pretty bad when we took him back to his cage, because he immediately turned into a sweet dog again, but I just didn't think he'd deal well with my condo. The volunteers told us that some dogs get their personalities warped by being in the pound and that this was the case with Hunter... but yeah, he's going to have to find someone else to take him home. Someone with a fenced in yard and some grass and some more patience than me.