This is a happy entry.

2004-01-04 at 9:47 a.m.

Her name is Bixby.

She's part German Shepherd and part Sneaky Dog, with huge ears and a fan tail and the softest fur this side of Kashmir.

We met on Saturday, when Andrew and I went to the Oregon Human Society. You may have noticed I have cruised their pages once or twice in the past few months.

So we went on Saturday, along with, I believe, 35% of Portland, most of them having small children. Andrew had been itching to go all morning--"All the best dogs will get taken!!!"--while I insisted we not leave until the house was dog-proofed (a.k.a. not the crack house it had been since Thanksgiving).

We perused the cages leisurely, dismayed to learn that the website apparently allows users to put "holds" on dogs like library books, and many of the dogs there already had holds on them, sometimes as many as three or four!!! Most of held dogs were puppies, though, so as it turns out this wouldn't have much effect on our new family member.

We wandered the aisles until we came to the last few dogs. Bixby caught my eye. "Let's just check once more, see how many dogs we'd like to test run," Andrew said.

By the time we got back to Bixby, another family was taking her out for a test run, and my heart sank.

So we test drove Jake, an 18-month-old black lab. After wrestling him back into his kennel and wiping his slobber off our arms and chests (yeah, a little too energetic and enthusiastic for us, methinks), we wandered by Bixby's kennel again, to find the Humane Society volunteer putting a dejected Bixby back in her cage.

"Is that other family going to take her?" I asked.

"No," said the volunteer. "I was really hoping they would but..."

"Can we try her out?" I asked.

The volunteer grinned. "Absolutely!"

Bixby's story: She's been with the same family since she was a puppy. She can sit, lie down, shake, and come (well, that last one only if she really feels like it). But she'd never been socialized around children. So when her family had a big Christmas party with kids, she got over excited or over stimulated, or over annoyed by an eight-year-old, and nipped him in the butt. No skin was broken, no permanent harm, but the owners gave her up the next day.

Which led to a broken hearted girl staring out to the horizon, searching each person who came by, hoping they were her humans.

(My take on the story was poor owner initiative. If your dog is not socialized around either large groups of people and/or children, you do not let that dog loose in groups of either. Either you keep your dog on a leash beside you, or you take the dog to a dogsitter for the night, or you leave the dog in another room. I understand why they made the decision they did, but I think the incident that caused it was their own fault, not poor Bixby's.)

So from that sad story, we were able to adopt this sweet, gently, smart, soft, playful girl.

We've taken her home, and brought out dog beds and squeaky toys (most of which no longer squeak). She doesn't much like the treats we bought, so we'll have to find new ones. And she's not so good on a leash yet, so until she is, I'll get a good upper body workout whenever I take her out.

But she curls up against you in her sleep.

And she loves to have her hips rubbed.

And she leans her chin on your shoulder in the car as she watches out the front window with you.

And she can't stop finding out about this new home she finds herself in.

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