Dogs now outnumber children in Dunbar house

We have three dogs in our household. That’s at least one dog too many, but what can we do about that now?
I used to think that the line between dog lover and weird dog person was between three and four. If you had three dogs (or cats), you just liked dogs. But if you have four, it’s one of your defining characteristics.
Now, I’m not so sure we’re not thought of in the neighborhood as “the people with all the dogs.”
It didn’t start off like that. We didn’t get all of the dogs at once. It took years to accumulate this little menagerie.
The oldest dog, Poncho, pre-dates the children. He turned 13 this summer and he’s a little blind and a little deaf, but not completely either.
When my wife, Stacy, and I went to the pound in San Diego and found Poncho, we were actually looking for a bigger dog. Not Great Dane, but maybe border collie-sized. We were also looking for a female, though I’m not sure why it mattered, because either way the dog was getting fixed.
But there was this puppy, small and scruffy terrier in a pen with a sexually abusive cell-mate. He just had this “please get me out of here” look on his face. We were hooked.
Actually, I think we were hooked a few weeks later when Stacy and I came home to our apartment and Poncho did not come running out to welcome us as he normally did. We went searching and found him, obviously embarrassed, behind the bed in the spare bedroom.
He’d somehow managed to get his head and one front leg through the hole in a plastic grocery bag. Inside the bag was a smaller plastic produce bag and inside that was one plum. While trying to get the plum out, he’d gotten himself stuck in the bag. There was no way of telling how long he’d been like that, but we’d been gone four or five hours.
It was the kind of trouble I would get myself into if I were a dog. Thankfully, I have opposable thumbs.
Poncho, who topped out at about 18 pounds, has been with us through two children, multiple career changes and a couple of home purchases. When we bought the first house, it came with a big back yard. We figured that Poncho needed a playmate.
We went to the pound, this time in northern California, and spotted a pair of puppies, obviously brother and sister. We went to ask about the male and were told that they hadn’t been there long enough to get adopted, but we could come back Saturday morning. It was first-come, first-served and we were advised to get there early, as a lot of people had asked about the pair of corgi mixes. Doors open at 7 a.m.
It seemed like a lot of trouble to me, there’d be other puppies. But Stacy, who was not sure we needed another dog in the first place, was now obsessed with getting this dog. She got up at 4 o’clock in the morning and drove down to the animal shelter. When she got there, there were two cars already in the parking lot.
She called me on the cell phone, convinced that she was too late. But we decided that she would wait it out. When the sun came up, the sleepy people began to get out of their cars. The man that had been there first announced that he was there for one of the corgis and he wanted the female. Stacy was amazed to find that the second guy in line was there for a kitten.
Stacy came home with the dog the kids names Shaggy. Later we added to the name, it’s Shaggy the Love Sponge. This is the most passive and lovable dog you’d ever want to meet. If you pay any attention to him, he’s your friend for life.
He also likes to sleep in the bed with Stacy and I. But it’s like sleeping with a 25-pound bag of sand. More than once Stacy has had to wake me up and tell me to get the dog off her legs so she can roll over.
When we still lived in the house in California, Poncho and Shaggy had the run of the back yard. There was a dog door and they could get out whenever they wanted. The yard was bordered by an eight-foot fence. They went in the back and played and laid little doggy land mines. Occasionally, there would be a squirrel (and once an iguana) on the fence and they would bark. But, otherwise, we rarely heard anything from them.
When we moved to Ohio, we got a corner lot with a four-foot fence that the dogs can see through. It turns out they are barkers. And everyone in the neighborhood, who walks a dog or a baby stroller, passes right past our yard.
Next week, dog No. 3 enters the picture.