Paul and I adopted a new dog yesterday… sort of.

Her name is Mae. She’s an eight month old German Shepherd / Lab mix. She’s fairly small dog by my standards, and I don’t expect her to gain much more height. She’s currently 45 pounds, and she’ll likely end up around 50 or 55 pounds, I think. (By way of comparison, Conrad weighs 70 pounds, and Abby and Kate were 75 and 80 pounds, respectively.)

Unfortunately, Mae has had a hard life so far. She’s been beaten up by gangs of larger dogs in some foster homes, as well as over-stressed by the family that recently attempted to adopt her. For the past few days, she’s been boarding at doggie day care. That’s fun but also stressful for a dog.

As a result of all that, she didn’t seem like a great prospect when we met her yesterday morning. She was snapping not just at Conrad but at Paul too. (She was fine with me.) However, I liked what I saw of her base temperament: very calm and easygoing. Her foster mom told us that her behavior was like nothing she’d seen in her home: it was probably due to the stress of the past week or so. The doggie day care workers gave her a very positive report too.

I’m a softie, and I didn’t want her going back into the same kinds of stress that caused her so many problems already. Plus, I thought she could recover herself very well in our quiet home with Conrad. However, I was reluctant to adopt her outright, as I was definitely concerned by what I saw. So we’ve taken her on as a foster dog, with the hope that we can adopt her in a few weeks. Basically, she’s my rent-to-own doggie!

Much to my delight, my instincts about her seem to be right on the money. The moment that we turned into the driveway, she became very happy-excited to be at our home. She’s settled in very nicely since then. She’s gotten along perfectly with Conrad: I’ve not seen the slightest bit of aggression from her toward him. She’s met my horse Tara. She was scared and barked a bit, but that’s to be expected: Tara is huge to little Mae. She’s also done well with the cats, although I’ll definitely need to keep an eye on that for the next few weeks. As for Paul, she was almost completely okay with him when he came home last night.

I was particularly delighted that she began playing vigorously with Conrad yesterday evening, first in our dog run, and then in our living room. I even caught some of it on video:

She’s really having a blast! I love how she pounces on him repeatedly — and gnaws on his neck like he does with other dogs. Clearly, Conrad is smitten, because he just doesn’t get on the ground like that with other dogs. (Conrad’s sneezing is part of what he does when he submits. I don’t know if other dogs do that too, but it’s quite odd!)

I’m amazed by her progress so far, and I hope that she continues to settle in nicely.