Finding Elliot

He wasn’t my first choice.

When I walked through the rows of caged dogs at the Mendocino Animal Shelter, all looking for someone to take them home, it was six months after my dog, Sarah, a Husky mix rescue dog, had been put down. She was fourteen-and-one-half years old. I was finally ready for another dog.

I was looking for an adult dog. A large one, maybe four or five years old. Most of the shelter dogs were younger. I geared into three dogs that turned out to be unavailable at the time. It was my daughter who attached herself to Elliot, a reddish brown Rhodesian Ridgeback mix with stitches in one eye, lying on a bed in his kennel. He was estimated to be one or two years old.

“I don’t think so,” I said. This dog was not what I had in mind.

“Why don’t you at least walk him?” She pushed the issue while the Adoption Coordinator took him from his kennel and put him on a leash.

Why not? I thought. Walking him wouldn’t change anything. I knew what I wanted.

I couldn’t believe how huge he was. And, the size of his paws indicated he was going to get bigger.

Elliot placed himself at my side, his massive Rottweiller head pressed against my thigh and automatically heeled, occasionally looking up at me for approval. He was one sweet dog. His rear end wiggled in ecstasy, his whip-like tail ending in a black hairy tuft wagged, and he loped along in a gangly puppy gait. Closer to one year than two, I thought.

I was hooked. Before long the two of us were on our way home.