Animal Welfare Comes to Call

A few weeks ago, I signed us up to become "pre-approved" for eventually adopting another Malinois. Our initial references checked out, and now we are gearing up for a "home visit" from the ABMC inspector.

This impending visit begs the question, "what would cause someone to fail" a home visit? Twenty emaciated dogs in an unfenced yard right on the highway? Yep.

But it also brings to mind the needs we have in a future dog. We need a dog who does NOT chase cattle. That would be a death sentence, as we are surrounded by people who make a living raising beef, people who would not tolerate someone's pet running weight off their cows. We need a dog who can do stairs. Echo never went up and down stairs when we lived in NY (she would just leap over the porch steps), but when we moved here, she had to learn to negotiate the treehouse nature of our new place. At the end, she could no longer navigate the stairs, and we had to walk her slowly around the back and down the sloped driveway. She also could no longer come up to the loft to be with us while we worked.

I think this is a great process and am looking forward to meeting someone who agrees with us that this is a special breed, deserving of a good environment. I haven't seen "our next dog" yet on the site, but hopefully when we are ready, we will have all our approvals set up in advance.