But that set the stage. Less than a week later, the pound made a
litter of five four-month-old puppies available for adoption.
Marcy adoped the male, Jeb, right away. As always, I was checking
the web site almost daily and looked through the photos of the
other pups. None of them aroused any interest in me at all until
I saw
photos of a
sweet, scared looking tan
puppy with beautiful husky
markings on the face. I went to meet her on a Thursday
afternoon. As I stepped into the kennel area, I could see the
puppies off the right and immediately spotted "Tauri" at the very
end. As soon as she saw me she put her little puppy paws up on
the chain link door and wiggled with excitement. I passed by her
siblings with hardly a glance and was met with uncontained enthusiasm
and kisses when I greeted my future dog. Ironically, she behaved
exactly opposite from the way that Nigel behaved when I met him (who,
alone among the many dogs at the pound that day, sat quietly inside his
kennel without barking or jumping up). But I wasn't looking for
that this time; I was looking for a dog to pick me, and I couldn't have
choreagraphed a warmer greeting. In the meantime, her three
sisters sat quietly in their kennels.
I went back to get a greeting room for us and soon got to play with
her. Of course she was bouncing with energy and full of puppy
enthusiasm, but after about fifteen minutes she came over where I was
sitting on the floor, draped a leg over my leg, and sat down next to
me. I thought it was a good sign! The next day I brought
Chris back with me and we both met with her, took her for a short walk
outside, and did a few personality tests, all of which were
positive. Then started the agonizing decision making
process. If only I could meet every other dog that would come up
for adoption in the next year! Then I could make a better
decision. What if my dog showed up the next week, after I'd
adopted this one already!? It was impossible to know. The
decision was painful, and brought up a lot of grief over Nigel, but the
next day I was back at the pound to sign the papers. On Tuesday
(which was Alaska Day and a state holiday) I picked up my new dog up
and we started our life together.
Cailey is pretty wonderful. She is a total handful (but in a
normal puppish sort of way), and is one of the smartest dogs I've ever
met. She takes to training astonishingly fast, is very sweet and
affectionate, loves to snuggle, is well socialized with other dogs, and
doesn't run away to play with other dogs at the beach no matter how
enticing! (At least she didn't until she turned about eight
months old and adolescence apparently kicked in, but so far only at the
parking lot and in a limited area). She and her brother Jeb play
together once or twice
week and Marcy and I are delighted to raise our second dogs
together. She wrote in an email once, "Does it feel a little to
you like someone took Nigel and Cavall and shook them up together and
made puppies?" Jeb and Cailey are a wonderful amalgamation of our
two former dogs, and lots more.
We knew from the pound that the puppies were born on a sailboat in
Aurora Harbor to, perhaps, a pit bull mother and husky father (both of
which can mean a lot of things). After two and a half months
of hearty speculation, Marcy and I finally met a lady at Sandy Beach
who recognized the puppies and told us about the parents, one of which
was the pit bull mother living at the harbor and the other a sled dog
puppy brought down from a tour company on the Juneau Icefield named
Pandemonium (Pan for short). That sparked a two month
investigation into Cailey's family history, mostly through a "missed
connections" Craigslist ad and chance encounters with other litter
owners. The Craigslist ad I placed read "Looking for the husky
Pandemonium" as I didn't know the mother's name yet. I
heard from four different people, the first of which mentioned that Pan
might not be the father after all; each email revealed a little more
information,
including more tidbits about the mother Relm. Then I ran into
a couple at Petco who have one of the sisters and recognized Cailey,
then Chris and I accidentally stumbled across Cailey's other brother
Lou at the pelmeni place in the wharf and talked to his owner.
Finally, I talked to Relm's owner himself and learned almost everything
I wanted to know. Relm is 100% pit bull (half Staffordshire
terrier/half red nose American pit bull terrier). There were
eight puppies in the litter, two males and six females. Pan
hadn't seen Relm since significantly before the puppies were conceived
in April (it was winter and snowing when they'd last met), so
it's more likely that a husky/lab type mix at the harbor is the
father. I now have
photos of seven of the
eight pups.
Before we learned all this, Marcy and I DNA tested both puppies, but
our confidence in the tests were shot when they came out
suspiciously disimilar (and somehwat unlikely). Cailey's test
showed a maternal
great-grandparent as an American Staffordshire terrier (as opposed to
showing a
more or less purebred mother) and
one of her paternal great-grandparents as a catahoula leopard
dog. "In the mix" was Siberian husky and several other spitz-type
breeds, but there was no more resolution than that. They had the
right idea, but it certainly lacked clarity. Jeb's test
from the same company showed mom as a purebred American bulldog and
dad as half Siberian husky/half basset hound! Although we had fun
and don't regret the tests, I certianly don't put much stock in
them.
Below are some photos of Cailey as a puppy, who is starting to grow up
out of the
craziness of early puppihood. Some day I'll update this with photos of
adult Cailey. For photos of
Cailey's littermates, see
Cailey's family page.
I'd
been dogless for about five months, including most of a summer, when I
began casually checking the Gastineau
Humane Society web site for
potential new dogs. The worst of the grief over Nigel's death had
passed and adventuring without a dog over the summer was becoming
intolerable. It was time to start looking. My parameters
were few: I wanted a young dog (less than a year old) but not
necessarily a puppy puppy, a dog that was born after Nigel died, a
reasonably large dog, and a mutt, preferably one with some husky
ancestry. I wasn't in any particular hurry, but I wanted to make
sure that when my dog showed up at the pound, I was there to adopt
it. After a couple of months I was getting disheartened by the
dominance of purebreds and small dogs at the pound--where were all the
young mutts I saw when I adopted Nigel? I even looked for
potential dogs in Anchorage (and was quickly overwhelmed). The
dam finally burst in early October when a two month old pitt bull/lab
mix showed up; although I wasn't interested in the dog myself, I passed
the information on to Marcy, who'd lost Cavall (Nigel's best friend) in
August. She and her partner immediately abandoned their intent to
wait a considerable time before their next dog, and hurried to meet the
puppy; unfortunately, he had already been adopted. 
