Intellectual Property Law

Pro-pound! Push Puppies!

By Siva Vaidhyanathan

Kathy G writes:

His name at the pound was Jughead, but we changed it to Django*. Jughead is actually a pretty good name for him though, 'cause he's plenty goofy. We adopted him two months ago; three months previous to that, we'd gone to CACC and adopted another wonderful little dog named Hildy**, who is just as adorable. I'd post a picture of her too, but I don't have a good one (a situation which I hope to remedy soon). They are both sweet, fun dogs who bring much love and joy to our lives (and provide hours of fascination and free entertainment as well).

We adopted Hildy and Django after our two previous dogs, our beloved Buster and Checkers, died within a few months of each other last year. Our first thought was to adopt the new dogs through a private, no-kill shelter, because we'd gotten Buster and Checkers from such a place when we were living in Brooklyn. So I researched some pet rescue organizations and got in touch with one.

Unfortunately, working with them turned out to a huge pain in the ass. We had to fill out a lengthy questionnaire asking us everything from our financial and job info to the histories of every dog we've ever owned to a list of personal references. And oh yeah, it included a number of essay questions asking us what we would do if our dog did X. They wanted a copy of our lease as well. I swear, you could probably adopt a newborn from China with less hassle.

But we completed the application and a person from the agency contacted us a few days later. Turned out there was a little wrinkle: we'd said on the application that we'd want to adopt on a trial basis at first, because we did have another dog (Checkers was still living) and our first priority was that the new dog get along with the old one. We were treated suspiciously because of that, which I found weird -- weren't we just showing a completely understandable and responsible level of care and concern for the welfare of the dog we already had?

Bravo, Kathy! The best dogs come from pounds.

Here is ours:

Full post as published by SIVACRACY .NET on April 03, 2008 (boomark / email).