Rescuing Sage

My mother has always loved dogs and always wanted one, but my father doesn't like them, which is why I was so surprised when he was the one who suggested I have a service dog. My mother hated that she couldn't always give attention to Poodleface, so after I'd had him for a few years my father and I talked it over and agreed that my mother should have a dog too. She decided that she wanted another standard poodle, that she wanted to adopt it from a shelter, and that she wanted to train it to be a therapy dog.

We live in the middle of nowhere and no one nearby had recently rescued any poodles, so she looked at online shelter sites for almost a month before finding the dog she wanted. Her name was Sage. She had brown fur, was three years old and very even-tempered, and had been dropped off at the shelter when, supposedly, she became too expensive to feed. The shelter workers said she was still producing milk and was acting like her puppies had just been taken away, which made them think she came from a puppy mill. Sage seemed perfect; she was in need of rescuing and she had the right temperament to be a therapy dog. There was only one problem. She was in Texas.

Before we could adopt Sage we had to know if she got along with Poodleface, because no matter what happened, Poodleface had to stay. I needed him. So the two of them had to meet. Poodleface had to go with my mother to Texas. And since Poodleface was my service dog and wasn't used to taking commands from my mother, I also had to go to Texas. 

This was just before Easter, and because we were planning to leave only a few days after we'd seen her on the website, there wasn't time to prepare the camper. We were going to have to stay in hotels. I'm uncomfortable with traveling that way because I'm allergic to so many things, and without the camper I wasn't going to be able to prepare my own food. I compensated by filling a backpack with instant macaroni and hoping our rooms would have microwaves. 

We drove

   and drove

      and drove

         and drove. I saw a toll road for the first time, and an amusement park in a city big enough it just stayed were it was instead of packing up and moving every week. I met several people with thick Spanish accents who didn't know what a service dog was, and a lot of people who were helpful and called me "hon." It was weird; no one was nasty about my dog, they were either supportive or uninformed. It kind of freaked me out; I was used to being harassed. 

Poodleface traveled well and behaved himself in hotel rooms, and he ate dog food and chewed rawhides that I left in the back seat for him every morning. I filled a dog dish from my water bottle while we were driving and held it back to him so he could take a drink, and when we stopped for gas we got out and walked around. He sniffed lots of new and interesting things, and in bigger cities with more people he found lots of places to signal on. He was great.

And so was Sage.

We took her home.

For her first few weeks with us she was the most shaky, traumatized dog you ever saw. She loved to be petted and hated to be left alone, and when no one was hugging her she'd take naps under the piano bench. When my mother sat down somewhere she'd get under her chair, and the first time she met my father she shook like a leaf. Her pads were ridiculously soft and she didn't know how to run, and she hoarded Poodleface's toys in her bed whenever he left them out. I laughed my head off when I found her sleeping in Poodleface's bed, with Poodleface curled unhappily on the floor because she'd piled hers with not only every toy she'd been able to get her teeth around but also a ball of yarn and a pair of my father's socks. 

She calmed down wonderfully, though. Now she doesn't sit under the furniture anymore and doesn't panic when she's left alone in the house. She loves to meet new people and let them pet her, and my mother is indeed training her to be a therapy dog. I hope she gets her license. She'd be perfect.