After Gizmo left, it became pretty aggressively clear that I can’t be alone in a house with no dog. I emailed our contact at Lab Rescue, and i got this back:

Hi, Jesse. I have a gorgeous black boy ready for you at Towson. His name is Midnight. 18 months old, 65 pounds, and got neutered on 12/1. He’s ready to go. He’ll be announced tomorrow and I can send you his profile, but he’s good with other dogs. Could you get him tomorrow? Thanks so much. Yes, I can take the cone on Sunday. Thank you!<

So I head over to Towson Veterinary hospital, leash in hand, and say “I’m here for Midnight”. There is no fanfare (like with Gizmo) and no warnings or anything, just a few moments later, a wild bucking bronco appears in the waiting room, choking himself on my leash which has been used as a slip lead. For about 20 seconds, I try to put the harness on him, before giving up, as a totally useless pursuit. The hapless vet tech looks at me struggling and says “do you want a collar or something” and i’m like “yes, please, for gods sake”. So we get a collar, and i wrestle him into the car, and its all good. In addition to several other things, I learned that I can’t make it to Towson and back in a lunch break.

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Got him home and he was obviously very strong, and not trained well. He’d sit if you had his full attention, though! Additionally, he was house-trained, in that he didn’t 1 or 2 in the house. Midnight was a special boy, very playful, exceptionally cuddly. He had tape on his tail, because he has “Happy Tail”, and believe me, if you caught a tail wag, it hurt!

Its important to note (and I’m not certain that I have elsewhere) that we don’t really get much history on these dogs. The intake form for Midnight said basically that he lived outside, or in the crate. I find the latter claim dubious (at best). Midnight had puppy energy, and separation anxiety (for sure). Thanks to the holidays, we didn’t really get a chance to “train” him for either the crate or out of separation anxiety, which made it so that we essentially couldn’t leave him alone. He was really great, though, and super cute. I don’t know why people think 18 month old dogs are couch potatoes. I’ll go on record as saying that they settle down around 3-5 and some NEVER slow down, especially without properly being trained.

We had a couple interested in Midnight the second night we had him. They were interested in another dog to help their dog “stay young”. This dog, a 12 year old husky, was not really SUPER interested, so, away they went. Another couple came, allegedly they were dog walkers and dog sitters, and had a 12 year old chihuahua. The 12 year old chihuahua didn’t like Midnight, which is like, the most “no shit!” thing that has ever been written on this blog, but for dog walkers, dog sitters, etc, these people were REALLY unprepared for a 1.5 year old dog. Like, to the point that the husband had the chihuahua in his arms and was jumping back, almost scared of Midnight.

A week came and went with no hits, and then the flood gates opened, and we got 3 hits in 24 hours. Some folks with 2 other dogs called us, and we set up the hot date, and they met and went home with him. He loves playing with their 3 year old Chocolate lab, and they’re working with a dog behavior specialist to figure him out around cats, and to calm him down. Happy endings 🙂 More pics after the jump.

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