Casper the Friendly Dog

Sue and I have talked about getting a dog for a long time. Originally, we had planned on waiting a while, but early September 2001 we found evidence that someone had been on our property in the middle of the night. They had gone into one of our vehicles, pulled out the garage door opener and started to open the door (whether intentionally or not). Our garage door is very finicky and old, and the opener will jam 1/4 of the way up if you don't "help it". On the morning of September 10, I found the door in that state. This accelerated our plans for a dog, but after September 11 things went on hold for a while.

Sue began looking again a week or so ago and found Casper's picture on the web. He is estimated at 3 years old (although we wonder if that is accurate, he is still somewhat "puppy-ish") and was at the SPCA for 3 months. The woman who walked the dogs at the Schuyler County SPCA discovered that he was about to be euthanized and saved him. She found a foster home for him in Watkins Glen (about 30 minutes from Ithaca) and we found him through that foster home. Here are some pictures:

He looks a lot like Sam, doesn't he?

He's gentle with the kids too:

While at the SPCA, he had a flea problem which caused him to chew excessively at his tail. It had gotten bad enough that they amputated the tip of his tail. The hair is still growing back, so it looks rather ridiculous at times! You can see evidence of this in the pictures.