Sitka

My friend Steve recently lost his best friend, his dog, Professor Jiggs. And I am extremely sad because those two had a very strong bond. Just like the one I have with Sitka. It made me realize that I haven’t blogged about my girl in a long time so this post is about Sitka.

We rescued Sitka from a German shepherd rescue group in the summer of 2001. We had just bought our house in Duvall, Washington and it sat on 1/3 of an acre with a large, fenced back yard. We both had German shepherds as family dogs when we were growing up so we went searching for another one.

After doing lots of research and finding a purebred dog rescue group we applied to adopt a dog. It was quite a process with lots of paperwork. Before we were approved, and after seeing Sitka’s picture on their website, we took a ferry to Poulsbo to meet Sitka at her foster family’s large farm. Unfortunately, she was kept in a 10 x 12 kennel 23 hours a day and only was allowed 1 hour of freedom each day with her so-called “German shepherd expert” foster dad. She was on her 1 hour freedom break when we were there and she paid absolutely no attention to Mike or me. All she wanted was to chase her tennis ball when her foster dad threw it. And he spoke to her in German so she wouldn’t be distracted by people talking in English. Weird.

The foster dad explained that Sitka was raised with her sister in a human family with a mom, dad and 2 kids. He also explained that having 2 female dogs in the same home was not so healthy because they would continually fight for the alpha position. Apparently, Sitka was the non-alpha sister, only loved by the mom in the family. So the family gave her to a rescue group at age 3.

The foster dad attempted to discourage us by telling us that Sitka would never be a typical family dog…we’d never be able to touch her beautiful ears or lie on the floor with her and watch TV together. So we took another ferry home and talked about her for a few weeks while we were still in the adopting parents “approval process.”

Finally, we got the call that we had been approved. All this time I had been looking at Sitka online everyday and hoping she could come home to live with us. So we made arrangements to go back to Poulsbo and bring her home to Duvall. That first week I was able to work from home so that I could be with Sitka and help her adjust to her new home – and freedom. And Mike did the same the following week. She was wonderful. She was shy in the beginning, plus neither of us know German, but she settled right in.

She didn’t dig holes. She didn’t eat shoes. She didn’t bark. She let us touch her ears. She let us roll around in front of the TV with her. And she even slept on our bed with us. She was just perfect! And she still is.

When we first decided to move to Mexico we didn’t think we would bring her. But the more we thought about it, the more we knew we couldn’t leave without her so she made the trip with us, went missing 2 times (once for 6 weeks!), and has now settled into Salem with us in our new home.


Our beautiful Sitka.