Readers, some day I will get caught up on the remaining trips of 2021. Until then, let’s just start afresh in the year 2022.

Meet Barley

I signed up to foster dogs and had dreams of a revolving door of adorable dogs and puppies coming into my life and home, with Hazy teaching them how to dog and love, and sending them to their forever homes.

The first dog I volunteered to foster was a small, fury, older terrier mix. Not our speed, so no risk of foster failing, right? Well, that dog was adopted before it even made it into rescue. So the rescue organization offered me a couple other options of dogs needing a foster. One looked like a younger Hazy, the other was a German Shepherd. I picked the German Shepherd. (cue the LOLZ)

Baroness (I called her Bari) was found as a stray in Texas, and best guess is she was somewhere between 1 and 2 years old. The rescue officially listed her as 2, the vet partner that day guessed she was a lot closer to 1 year old. She was overwhelmed and happily jumped into my car and came home with me.

Hazy was a little unsure about this strange new dog. She scarfed down a meal and fell asleep on my foot. And she instantly imprinted on Jamey.

Fostering is emotional

For the next week we had lots of fights. Jamey wanted to foster fail. While I thought she was a nice dog, I wasn’t ready for a second dog. There were still months of basketball season ahead, which means all the work of this new dog would fall to me. I had big hopes for fostering lots of dogs. It didn’t feel right, and I wasn’t ready.

So I read three different applications for her within about 5 days of being with us. None of them were great. One was an 18 year old, living with their parents, while working and attending school – so mom and dad would do all the work with this dog. One person had a couple of pet birds; Bari brought me the wing of a freshly killed bird, so that probably wouldn’t be a match. And the third was obsessed with the German Shepherd breed and went on and on about how he would do anything for a German Shepherd, his son had no friends and only played video games, so this dog would be his son’s best friend, and if we didn’t let him adopt this German Shepherd, he would have no choice but to find a Shepherd another way, likely a backyard breeder. Every dog deserves a home, but making that choice is harder than I expected.

After talking it over with some friends, the crazy GSD obsessed family won. She would have a huge yard and someone with breed experience. Many tears were shed as we scheduled the meet and greet. Fun fact – once the rescue approves the potential adopter, if they like the dog, they take the dog home that same day. So we had to brace ourselves to say goodbye to this good girl. More fights were had.

Meeting her family

That morning we took Hazy to his “graduation” and continued fighting about keeping this dog. So I made Jamey a compromise – if something happened, like the family met her and decided she wasn’t the dog for them – we would adopt her, but we weren’t backing out of this now. Based on how fanatical the guy was in his devotion to the breed, it seemed like a safe bet.

So, off to the meet and greet we went, and we waited for her family to arrive. We waited nearly half an hour. They called the dude, multiple times. No answer. We waited longer. They called again, no answer. So, we adopted her.

She’s Barley now. Hazy and Barley. Our brewery pups!

Barley is a brilliant dog and so sweet. She is easy to train, eager to please. Hazy is her sun, moon and stars. Jamey is her person. She’s also dog reactive, but we’re working with her.

I admit I struggled with her for a while. She looks too much like Buddy. She doesn’t love me nearly as much as Buddy did. She’s very reactive. She isn’t Buddy. I secretly hoped dude would call and beg for one more chance to adopt her. These two dogs together look very similar to the boys and it makes my heart ache.

A few months have passed since we foster failed, and she has grown on me. She is so so so sweet. Seeing how much Hazy loves her helped me accept her too.

Welcome to the Wandering Weirdos, Barley.