Mad Max

Reddick passed the final exam. He made a few newbie mistakes, but showed a lot of promise.

After we'd decided that he'd make a good trail dog but before we'd finished Saturday's ride, Lauren's daughter called and told us the owner had been located. His name was Max, which he readily answered to. I called them after the ride and quizzed them a bit more. It was the owner.

I resisted the urge to lecture them about things like why he had no collar/ID/chip, why he wasn't fixed, why they took 4 days to come forward and decided the positive approach was best if I wanted to keep this dog. I told the girl that we really enjoyed having him around, what he could do on trails and that we'd decided we'd have kept him had nobody claimed him.

We were really bummed on the way home, but knew we'd done the right thing and the dog was going back to its family. We discussed calling the local rescue group to adopt a Weim or going to the shelter and looking around. As cool as this particular dog was, we'd seen how cool it would be (and how easy our evenings would be) if Fontana had a buddy to occupy his time.

The girl's father (the actual owner) called a couple of hours later and basically offered me the dog. He said he travels a lot, has been looking for a new home for him and thought that ours would be a good one. He wanted to stop by, obviously to make sure we were worthy, but then Max would be ours.

He didn't make it until this afternoon. I felt really bad for the guy because he was obviously really attached to Max, but realized this was the best thing for the dog. I went out of my way multiple times to tell him not to do this if he really didn't want to. In the end he gave us all his stuff, thanked us and left.

Meet Max. He'd come say hi but he's really whooped from the weekend. :)