[stonyloam]

That reminds me of how I got my dog Chole. Our dog Kirby had just died and my wife and I had decided to wait 3 or 4 months before getting another dog. So 5 days later I was scouring the paper for a Springer spaniel pup. I phoned a breeder, who said he had 3 males (we were looking for a girl), but he had an “accidental” Springer/German shorthair pup that was 5 weeks old. We went down just to take a look, and on the way made a hard and fast rule that the pup would have to be exactly what we were looking for, a small healthy Springer, totally objective, no feeling sorry. When we got there we could see that the breeder was a lot like the pet store owner, not very good. Well we took a look. She was exactly what we were NOT looking for! Pitiful little brown thing living outside eating crappy adult dog food. Trying to think of some way to get out of it I asked “how old is she”? “Seven weeks, ready to go” (hmmm aged two weeks in 45 minutes). Rules, what rules? Of course we took her home. Took her to the vet, umbilical hernia (easily fixed). She weighed 3 pounds, (two pounds of dog and 1 pound of worms). It all turned out well and she is a great dog (63 pounds). My wife says that when she dies she is going to bury me with her, whether I am dead or not. She is joking…. I think. Rescue? She probably would not have lived very long there. So Jimijaw there are lots of crappy pet store owners out here luckily there are lots of folks like you too. Yeh my posts are getting kinda long too.