Our Dog, Sirius

We went to Arizona Small Dog Rescue (AZSDR) on January 2nd, 2025 looking to see Sirius specifically. At first, Sirius did not like us—he wouldn't even take chicken from us at the shelter and instead barked at us and hid under an outdoor chair.

But we had seen how he was with Logan, one of the employees at AZSDR. When Logan first took us to meet Sirius, Sirius was so excited to see him and jumped all over him. He just didn't like us.

Logan left us to get to know Sirius and Sirius' attitude toward us did not change. We stood there staring at him, unsure of what to do.

Jess said something along the lines of, "You can never judge a shelter dog by the first impression."

Sirius had been at the shelter for about a month, and had a sketchy past. Not that he was into drug-dealing (he is now—a problem we're working on), but that the history in the listing didn't match up with what Logan had told us. So, we don't really know anything about Sirius' past other than he had fathered two litters of puppies.

Sirius had been seen by other families and likely reacted to them the same way. Sirius had also been taken to Petco for an adoption fair. No one wanted him.

Reflecting on how Sirius was with Logan, we saw potential and resolved to adopt Sirius—even though he was pretty rude to us.

When Logan returned, he was surprised that we wanted to adopt Sirius. But, still, he brought the paperwork, and it was all made official.

Jess held him for the entire car-ride back to the old condo. He wasn't squirming or fighting us—most likely just confused and unsure what was happening.

When we got to the condo, he ran around and continued to bark at us and jumped onto the bed defiantly. After expending a lot of energy, he curled up into a little ball—we let him stay on the bed and he took a nap.

When he awoke, he was a completely different dog. He kept coming up to us and was continually trying to lay with us. When either Jess or I came home, he would jump on us out of excitement, just as he had done with Logan. When I would take Sirius out on brief walks and Jess would go out on her longer walks, if we crossed paths Sirius would stop dead in his tracks, process that it was in fact Jess that he was seeing, and try to sprint over to her, pulling on the leash with more force than a dog of his stature should be capable of.

Jess was right: "You can never judge a shelter dog by the first impression."

Now we've just got to get him to stop selling heroin.