The Sad Story of The Day We Almost Had a Puppy

This past Saturday Cody and I were out running errands and drove past a Pet Adoption event going on in a parking lot.  Cody wanted to stop and just enjoy looking at the dogs and I said we really shouldn't...  We've been talking about getting a dog for a while; we definitely WANT a dog, just haven't been sure if the timing was right yet.  Anyways.  We did end up stopping and looked around and it was fun to just pet them walk around.  Then we made the mistake of talking to a lady working the adoption event.  (There was actually 2 separate things going on right next to each other so at first that was confusing.)  She explained how all their animals were found and now in the shelter, and all had been spayed and neutered and were up to date medically.  She asked if we wanted to go into their trailer thing and look at their pets for adoption... and we did.  We were in there about 30 seconds before I spotted a super cute black puppy (she was 4 months old) and started trying to play with her through her cage.  The lady noticed the attention I was giving her and pulled her out for us to take on a walk.  The name they had assigned her was Juliette.

We took her out and after being out of her cage a while she really started to show some attitude and spunk.  She was adorable and cute and fun!  She already listened fairly well also which was nice.  When she sat she was a little above my knees and on the leash she was already able to actually kinda pull me around.  I can't image the lack of control I would have had with her in the future!  We pretty much fell in love with her within 30 minutes.  We kept playing with her and enjoying getting to know her... and I kept trying to talk to Cody seriously.  I'd lean over and be like "so, are we actually considering this? I can't tell what you're thinking."  We were outside with her probably an hour, and then decided we couldn't leave without her!  We got super excited and went through the paperwork to adopt her.  They held onto her for us for about an hour as we went to a couple stores to buy the basics (and some more fun stuff) for her to take her home.

When we picked her back up, she sat in my lap as we drove home, and it was adorable.  She sat calmly and cuddled up to me and laid her head on my shoulder and licked my chin.  We got back to our apartment and I walked her around outside while Cody went in to pay our pet deposit.  It was taking him quite a while and I started to wonder why.  When he came back on he had this super upset look on his face and said we couldn't have her.  We knew about the apartment's size restriction, but we did not recall ever hearing about an age restriction.  The dog would have to be a year old and we had to have proof of her age.  She was only 4 months.  It was a completely awful feeling to have bonded with her, bought her lots of fun stuff, brought her home, and then realizing we had no choice but to take her back.  We felt awful for her as well... like we had potentially robbed her of a chance to be adopted by someone else.  I know it's only been a few days, but she was SO adorable, I hope someone has adopted her by now.  It was so sad taking her back, and then coming home with all this new dog stuff, and having no dog.

Yes, I will admit I cried.  I know we only even knew her a couple hours... but we bonded and she already felt like ours.  She would have been the perfect dog... we just know it.  We had named her Bella.

So now, we are dog-less, with lots of dog stuff.  And now that we got so close to almost having a dog, we are really ready to get one!  I'm a little sad we can't get a puppy due to the age restriction, but I'm still excited we are going to still try and get one.  We are planning on going tomorrow or Thursday to look again.  Hopefully soon I will be able to post about a new dog that we have fallen in love with.

I don't have any good pictures of Bella... I only took a couple once Cody explained that we couldn't keep her and we were driving to take her back.  So they are not good pics... we were in the car and she was in my lap and I couldn't get a good angle of her.  But here are 2 pics that I did get: