I Love Your Pets!

This is Roger at 5 months of age. We adopted him on April 4, 2004 and this picture was taken the following day at work (we took him to work for a week so he could learn that people were actually friendly). Roger and his brother became Humane Society residents after they were found abandoned. They were only there for a few days before we sprung Roger and then someone else bailed out his brother shortly thereafter - I know this because I checked to make sure that someone took the brother, otherwise I would have taken him myself and found him a good home. The reason we didn't take both in the first place is because they were unsocialized, and to keep them together would have meant that they had no incentive to become social with people or other dogs.

Roger was understandably terrified when he met us - he wanted nothing to do with people. When we got him home he ran into the bedroom, hid in a dark corner, and refused to come out. I felt terrible because he was so afraid of us, plus I was having trouble remembering his name - the people at the Humane Society named him Roger...it stuck because we liked it, but if I could have, I would have named him Carl.

Now, what's one of the first things one does when they bring home a puppy from the Humane Society? Correct! You give him a bath. New puppies always smell like pee... Anyway, since Roger was already scared out of his mind, I figured it was as good a time as any to give him a bath. Oddly enough, he liked it...he really liked it. We bonded over that bath and he decided that it was okay to like me. So instead of hiding in a dark corner, he was following me everywhere. J (my boyfriend) was jealous that the dog was warming up to me, but was still afraid of him. I told him that he should do something to bond with Roger - I even suggested giving him another bath since it worked for me. But J wanted to try something else...

I apologize for the poor quality of the photo...it's a picture of a picture. What you see here is a recently bathed puppy, wrapped in a towel, sitting next to J who is holding a box of cereal. As it turned out, Roger really liked Winnie the Pooh cereal and thus he and J bonded over it.

These days Roger continues to like taking baths, enjoys snacking on cereal, loves meeting new people and dogs - and he still follows us everywhere...