We adopted a dog!

My husband and I have been discussing adopting a dog for a lonnnnnng time. We both grew up with dogs, but our condo in San Diego was only 875 square feet and on the second floor with no yard. Between the lack of space, lack of yard, and already having cats, we knew that we'd need to wait until we were better situated before adopting a dog. In fact, when we were looking at duplexes in San Diego when selling the condo, one of the criteria for buying a new place was "Do we think we could have a dog in this place?"

Our house in Bothell has a fenced in yard, albeit a small one. We have over double the square footage inside the house, as well. Once we returned from our holidays travels in San Diego, we decided that the timing was right for us to start looking at local humane societies, rescue groups, etc. On Saturday, in the pouring rain, we headed to PAWs, an adoption center in Lynnwood and toured the available dogs. Two dogs stood out to us, Mo, who was a friendly cutie but so new that they didn't have any info available on him, and Apoo, a six-month-old shepard/terrier mix who had been rescued from Iran and who was also a friendly cutie. Apoo was on a 24-hour adoption hold when we arrived, but that hold expired about 30 minutes after we arrived, so we were able to have a meet-and-greet session with her.

Apoo and Eva hit it off instantly, which pretty much cemented our decision to adopt her. She had already been spayed and microchipped, so she came home with us that day. Here she is, in her new "forever home":

 

We are going to rename her "Arya", because "Apoo" is a little to close to the name of a certain famous Quik-E-Mart manager. Plus, Eva can actually say "Arya", and we have a history of naming pets after fan-favorite characters from HBO series.

We weren't aware of this, but Apoo/Arya had been featured on a local news story a few days before we adopted her. It's pretty horrifying to learn/read about what her fate might have been had she not been rescued in Iran:

PAWs helps save puppy targeted for research in Iran

She is a total sweetheart of a doggy (we're currently working on housebreaking), and we're very happy to have her as part of our family.