Today is the anniversary of my adoption of Sophia. I remember a beautiful little Italian greyhound scared of everything. She was not used to the city.
She came home on a Saturday morning. Just like introducing a new cat to the household, I stayed with her in a separate room to bond. We hung out all weekend in the guest room of our former house. I have some interesting pictures of the weird positions I found her sleeping in!
The first 6 months were an adjustment - she always kept close to me but I didn't feel she was bonded to me until several months passed. She would do what I asked her but it seemed she always had a suspicious "what's in it for me?" agenda lurking in the background. A switch seemed to be thrown at some point, tho, and she went everywhere she could with me because SHE wanted to, not because I asked her to.
Never did I think I would be in a position of being able to take her to work every day. Here she is this morning coming back to the front office after a visit to her water dish in the conference room. She is leashed to my desk most of the time since we are on busy Greenwood Avenue and we have a lot of visitors. But we go for walks and I know she's not peeing on my carpet at home. I started in the position of managing the Front Office at GreenWorks in February. I was excited at the time because I envisioned long breaks in the middle of the day to walk around Greenlake. Hasn't happened yet. But it's been raining or snowing ever since we started here so it is not exactly our fault.
Sophia has had a lot of companionship since she joined my household. In 2005-06 I was working part time doing marketing for some loan officers at a mortgage company on the Eastside. So I didn't feel too bad leaving her at home, since I wasn't ever gone more than 6 hours. I tried taking her to doggy daycare to socialize her. I took her to
Seattle Canine Club by Safeco Field since it was essentially at the foot of the on-ramp to I-90. It was reported that she spent the entire day (all 5 hours of it) looking for me. She was a shy dog so couldn't be with the big romping canines. And could not be caged either. When they put her in the exercise pen with the other small dogs she just jumped right out of it, in her typical gazelle-like fashion. After the third visit and some studying up on "separation anxiety" I determined she did NOT have true separation anxiety since she did not destroy things in the house and she did not hurt herself. She began getting great naptime at home in the sun.
In 2006 I went independent and worked for a real estate broker that did relo work at SeaTac Airport and road projects elsewhere. She didn't mind my bringing Sophia to work, but I often did not since I never knew what I was going to be doing that day and if it was sunny I would have an issue with leaving the dog in the car. I also worked out of a portable building at SeaTac Airport and they were dog friendly until they began acquiring Town & Country Mobile Home Park just south of the airport and we had too many guests in the building and they made a no-dog rule.
Sophia has just updated
her blog, called "Paws for a moment", with the rest of this story. There are also come fun pictures of her in her photo album.
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