Julie’s beautiful golden retriever lab mix, Sadie, lived to be thirteen years old. But when she passed, Julie’s other dog, Finn, started getting mopey. It wasn’t like the Jack Russell mix to act that way, so when Julie saw a big scraggly dog on the Placer County Animal Shelter website, she knew she had to go get her.
Julie was there the next day when the shelter opened. She had Finn with her, so the volunteer let her and her dog meet the stray before she did any of the paper work.
“You’re the first one to meet her,” the volunteer said.
The found stray was bigger than Finn, but he didn’t care. He saw a playmate and got to it, romping around the play yard designed for socializing. The stray joined in, and the volunteer told Julie that things looked good for adoption.
As Julie waited for her paperwork to be processed, another volunteer explained that the stray had been found covered in ticks and fleas. She’d had at least one litter of puppies, maybe more, even though she was only one or two years old.
Julie looked at the scraggly but now clean, microchipped, spayed dog and decided to call her Fraggle, since her older son loved the puppet show called Fraggle Rock when he was a kid.
When it was time to pay the adoption fees, Julie was ready to write check for $200, but some anonymous person had already paid it. Julie went back later and paid for somebody else’s fees to pay if forward and keep it going.
Now Finn and Fraggle spend their days running in the big yard, cozying up on the rug (dog spooning), and giving each other doggy kisses.
Julie had Fraggle’s DNA tested. She turned out to be 30% Labradoodle, six other kinds of dogs, and definitely a little bit sheep herding dog, the perfect Heinz 57 pet. For those of you too young to get that reference, it was a special bottled sauce with 57 ingredients (an alternative to Heinz’s purebred ketchup).
Fraggle gets walked most days and doesn’t pull. Finn gets walked separately, since the two dogs together are too much for sixty-ish Julie.
Julie still misses her lovely Sadie, but Fraggle has certainly helped fill the void of losing her big half golden retriever, half lab.
Finn, who’s about six, has no complaints, either. Young blood is always welcomed to liven up a lonely dog’s long day.
Fraggle has found her forever home. She is forever grateful.
Just look at that face!
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 