Mumbo Gumbo!

If you haven’t noticed my byline it says that this is “The story of a girl, her husband, the tiniest diplomat, an ugly reindeer sweater and her traveling scarf.” Last week we heard the detailed story of the traveling scarf and today I am going to tell you about The Tiniest Diplomat, more commonly known as my Chihuahua named Gumbo.

Ahhh he’s so cute!! Well how did this little guy become part of my family?? This is one of my favorite stories to tell! I haven’t owned a dog since our family Coker Spaniel, Lady died back in 2008. Patrick and I had gone over to a friends house and they had the cutest little French Bulldog named Basil. I wanted one SO bad! I got online looking for one and soon realized French Bulldogs were hard to come by and if you found one you would be paying big bucks for it. I’m not one to pay big money for something when there are plenty of animals out there that desperately need homes. So I switched my gears to rescue organizations. This went on for about a week or so of me emailing Patrick pictures all day long of cute little dogs. Needless to say I’m sure it got a little annoying and Patrick finally says “Stop looking at pictures and pick one already!” Silly Patrick, he might not have known better back then but I’m sure by now he has figured out once I get an idea in my head it sticks! So the next morning I called up my friend Sophie and told her we were going to go find me a dog! She accepted the mission and hopped in my car to go shelter hopping, except our journey began and ended at only one place, The Washington Animal Rescue League. I highly recommend the place for anyone looking in DC! It was here that Sophie and I stumbled upon a little dog named Tarzan! They let me take him into the special visitor room and I fell in love! (with the dog not the name)

So I went and talked to the people that are in charge on adoptions and they told me they needed to meet with everyone in the household before they would let me take him home and also bring by Patrick’s other dog Dexter for a meet and greet. When I told them Patrick wouldn’t be available today they said “That’s ok we can just speak to him on the phone” So Sophie and I got back in the car and drove back to the condo to get Dexter, Patrick’s deaf and nearly blind Weimaraner. Patrick’s response to my “I think I found a dog at the shelter” text was “Of course you did.” uh oh not going as smoothly as I thought…. ok well we will work on Patrick later lets just have Tarzan and dexter meet and see how that goes.

Trip #2 of the day to WARL – Meet and Greet with Dexter. They took us outside into the “meeting area” It didn’t go excellent but it also didn’t go bad… it did however include everyone pooping all over (the dogs not the humans) they sniffed each other and pooped some more and then sniffed again and then just ignored each other but the guy who was supervising deemed this acceptable enough and went to tell the rest of the staff Tarzan was ok to go home with me if I wanted him. Yelp… Let’s try Patrick again. “But I really want him and you told me to stop looking at pictures and to act on it!” responded by “I thought it would take longer!” Ughh anyway back to adoption staff where their newest statement was “We don’t need to talk to your boyfriend anymore you seem really responsible!” Ahhhhh… I can take Tarzan home and I don’t even need Patrick’s say so??? No, Amanda this is not what people in adult relationships do so Sophie and I left the shelter without Tarzan and sad hearts 😦

Sophie and I went home for awhile until I made the decision that this battle wasn’t over! I said “Sophie, we’re getting back in the car, going to Petco and back to the shelter to rescue Tarzan from the jungle” I was pretty confident and just after we got everything from the pet store we needed Patrick calls and says “If this is what you really want, go get him but you need to get food, a bed, a collar…..” (interrupted by me) “Don’t worry we already got it! we’re already on our way back!” 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Trip #3 to the shelter: Time to take Tarzan home! Ooooeeeeoooooooeeeoooo! (that was my best Tarzan impersonation) Once we got the papers we realized that little Tarzan had been at the shelter for over a month, and before he was here he was at a shelter in Louisiana and his name was Boo. Poor little guy! I can’t imagine why anyone would give him away. So we took him home and since Patrick wasn’t there to pick him out I gave him the honor of renaming our little jungle warrior. Patrick says “He’s from Louisiana, he needs a southern name!” and that was that….

Hello my name is Gumbo!