Petfinder Blog

When we last heard from Greg Kincaid, author of the novel A Dog Named Christmas, he and his wife Michale Ann had just adopted a scruffy terrier named Chance after a long search for the perfect dog. Read all of Greg's posts here.

Chance was a good name, but we wanted to try on a few of our own. We settled on Hank, the name of a favorite character in my book, A Dog Named Christmas, for about an hour, and then shifted sequentially to Denny (from my favorite TV show, Boston Legal), Joey (from my favorite musical, Pal Joey), Lewis (my favorite comedian is Lewis Black), Jerry (my second favorite comedian is Jerry Seinfeld) and then, out of exhaustion and fear of bodily injury from our vet's tech if we called one more time to tell them we'd changed the name, we finally settled on Rudy (like the famous third-string Notre Dame football player).

Unfortunately, Rudy soon earned some additional nicknames.

When we brought him home, we were expecting the five-month-old pup to be a little rambunctious and in need of at least some training. But Rudy seemed surprisingly quiet and extraordinarily well-behaved. He was so smart that we only had to tell him things once and he seemed to "get it." He was naturally house trained and got along great with the cats and our other dog. We seemed to have hit the canine jackpot. At that point, being the proud adoptive parent, I gave him the name MIT (like the prestigious college).

But Rudy had been taking allergy pills for a rash, and once the allergy cleared up and Rudy came off the Benadryl, another dog took his place:  A genuine full-fledged puppy we named Nubs -- like horns we could practically see emerging on his devilish furry head.
 

Greg Kincaid is the author of A Dog Named Christmas, a novel about the power of pet adoption. He has been blogging for Petfinder about his and his wife Michale Ann's quest to adopt the perfect dog. Read all his posts here.

We had agreed that after our confusing visit to Wayside Waifs the night before that we would have to think a while longer before continuing on our journey to find me the perfect man-dog.

It started to occur to me that our analysis for picking a dog was missing a layer. We had thought about size, age, breed, coat qualities, color and general personality traits, but when we looked at dogs that had those valued qualities, I just didn't flip.

Why was it that after thinking about all the things that seemed to matter most, the one dog that met none of our requirements seemed the most attractive? How fitting that his name was Chance. He was four months old, a puppy. We wanted an older dog. He sure looked like a terrier and I wanted a hound.

When we took Chance into the holding area to look him over, he saw a garden hose hanging on the wall and he didn't like it. The fur on his back went up and he gave the hose a good barking. The hose didn't back down, so he gave up and ran over and leaped straight onto my lap like we had known each other for years and not 25 seconds. I wasn't sure if he was retreating from the vicious hanging wall serpent or just wanted my company. It didn't matter. He was telling me that this was where he wanted to be, a message the more perfect dogs never delivered.

Greg Kincaid is the author of A Dog Named Christmas, a novel about the power of pet adoption. He has been blogging for Petfinder about his and his wife's quest to adopt the perfect dog. Read all his posts here.

Lab mix Seal Boy is adoptable at T.A.R.A. in Kansas City, MO

My calm indifference caused the battle lines in the Dog Wars to tilt in my favor. "I guess we can't agree, so we'll just pass on a dog for now" brought my wife Michale Ann straight to the bargaining table. We framed a four-part truce. Its terms:

A) We would get a dog that was big enough to navigate a hay field without a periscope.
B) A scruffy, cute face would not be the single deciding factor in choosing a dog.
C) We would take our time, look at lots of dogs, and make a careful decision.
D) We'd spent the last 25 years raising kids, so we would stay away from puppies, opting instead for a wise and mature personality.

As per the terms of the truce, we both combed Petfinder for the next few days and tried to get a feel for the look and size of the dog we might be able to agree upon. I had a hound-looking dog in mind, but Michale Ann seemed pulled in another direction -- really, just about any other direction. I stuck to my guns for a few more days and finally she made a sneak attack to nudge me off my hound fixation.

"What about Seal Boy?"

Last week, I had to interrupt the "Dog Wars" to jump up and down like I just sacked Peyton Manning on a fourth-down game clincher. One very special dog was adopted at a book signing and I was pumped! Not being in the dog-adoption business, it was exciting for me -- though I am sure commonplace for others.

If I was giddy about finding a home for one dog, you can only imagine the gymnastics that resulted from this letter from Pam at Florida's Pine Forest Animal Clinic.

Dear Greg,

I am a veterinary technician in a busy animal hospital in Pensacola, FL. I picked up your book and loved the story. At the hospital where I work, we had 37 abandoned, unwanted and repaired pets looking for homes. That is, until I took your idea from the book and created "Foster a Lonely Pet for the Holidays."

The local news did a several-day piece on the nightly program [here's one clip]. It was amazing!! All of the animals were sent to homes for Thanksgiving and only three cats returned today; the other 34 were adopted.

I thank you for a great story and idea! We plan to do it again in a few weeks for Christmas.

Pam

In my book, A Dog Named Christmas, Todd McCray hears about a holiday fostering program called "Adopt a Dog for Christmas" and pleads with his dad to participate. Todd's father has some reservations about the concept and calls the shelter for details. He soon sets his concerns aside: "Ultimately, it was one of those times in my life when I took a deep breath and trusted that it would work."

Thanks to Pam for taking a deep breath and trusting that what worked in this story would work in the real world too.

Pam received "several hundred" calls and assures me that she put the whole program together in 10 days and with very little time or effort! There were not nearly enough dogs to go around. She said she had never seen such an enthusiastic response.

Greg Kincaid is the author of A Dog Named Christmas, a novel about the power of pet adoption. He has been blogging for Petfinder about his and his wife's quest to adopt the perfect dog. Read all his posts here.

I know I'm supposed to be writing about the Dog Wars, but I have to take a mid-week hiatus while the combatants reload.

It's very exciting to see A Dog Named Christmas listed this week as the "On the Rise" selection by the American Book Seller's Association for hardcover fiction. But something else happened recently that reminded me that the real power of the book lurks behind those numbers.

I was at a book signing at Watermark Books in Wichita. The signing started at 7:00 p.m., and around 6:30, Barbara and Jack from Lifeline Animal Placement and Protection, Inc., showed up with three dogs in need of homes. We had decided that, because of the strong rescue theme in the book, public events would be a great opportunity to also plug Petfinder and animal rescue. And what better way to promote adoption than with adoptable dogs?

Jack and Barbara had three dogs with them. One was a small terrier-spaniel mix. The second was a miniature-poodle mix, and the third dog was very large standard poodle named Rogan. Rogan was beautiful and clearly had more charisma than any man or beast could demand. His picture really does not begin to capture his rather regal bearing.

When we last heard from A Dog Named Christmas author Greg Kincaid, he and his wife Michale Ann had decided to adopt a shelter dog -- then realized they had very different ideas about what makes the ideal dog. Read all of Greg's posts here.

I tried to explain the concept of the dog I wanted in perfectly simple terms. "I want a dog that looks like he can discuss the finer aspects of elk hunting and is potty trained for a bass boat."

My wife looked at me strangely and said, "But you don't hunt and don't own a bass boat."

"Exactly."

Her head cocked to one side. "Yes?"

"This dog has to say MAN all over it. This has to be a dog that can carry my fishing pole ..."

"Even though you don't fish?"

"Precisely. This dog should jump excitedly within 100 yards of a shotgun hanging in the back of pick-up truck."

"That you don't own?"

"Right. Do you understand now?"

"Not really."

Over the next few days, I sent Michale Ann a flurry of e-mails suggesting dogs posted on Petfinder who looked well-suited for me, including Izzy, a 2-year-old basset hound/lab mix waiting for a home at Heart of America Humane Society in Kansas City, KS.

Greg Kincaid wrote about shelter dogs in his novel A Dog Named Christmas, and after researching the book, was inspired to adopt one himself. He's chronicling his adoption journey each week on the Petfinder blog. Read all his posts here.

Most of our pets wandered onto our farm looking for dinner and then hung around for the next 80 dog years.

They picked us, and we cared for them because they needed a home. A few showed up attached to my wife, Michale Ann, or one of our kids, who was pleading, "Please ... please ... please, can I keep him?"

I'm not good at "no," so for long periods
we've had bumper crops of pets. Until I
found Petfinder, I had never had the opportunity to engage in a well thought-out selection process.

Michale Ann and I haven't had a "walk-on" for quite a few years now and we were down to only one dog, a little dachshund named Ruthie who seems surgically attached to my wife's hip. With the exodus of our now-grown children, the house has grown still, particularly in the evening hours and on weekends.

The idea that maybe I should carefully choose just the right dog for me was a concept that made its way from my subconscious and into A Dog Named Christmas. Todd, the main character, spends hours at his local animal shelter, picking just the right dog for him.

My wife said that this was a clear manifestation of my latent desire to adopt a dog. Translation: She wanted another dog.

Editor's note: Greg Kincaid's first novel, A Dog Named Christmas, hit shelves on Tuesday. The book tells the story of a special young man who inspires his entire town to take in dogs from the local shelter.

Greg lives on a farm in East Kansas with his wife, Michale Ann. He and his family had always taken in stray dogs who "found them," but after writing the book, Greg was inspired to adopt from a shelter. He will be blogging here each week about his search (on Petfinder, of course!) for the perfect dog.

This fall, Christmas came early. On my wish list was launching my new book, A Dog Named Christmas, finding a good truck and, finally, settling on the perfect dog to go into it.  

In October, I finally found the right truck. It's a real  beauty -- a 1982 Ford  F-250 with only 80,000 miles. The search took me several months, but the book was worse: That was about nine years from start to finish. The effort that went into the truck and book were significant, but picking the right dog ... I had no idea! It was quite a journey, but I can't remember when I've had more fun.

To research A Dog Named Christmas, I had the privilege of visiting shelters and meeting some of the most amazing people -- many of whom have made it their life's task to care for creatures who want nothing more than a home, a place where they belong. Before I wrote this book, I had never been inside a shelter. In my mind, it would have been too painful. Like most of us, it was easier to pretend that the problem didn't exist and, even if it did, it wasn't really my problem. Frankly, like some of the characters in my book, I was carrying around a flawed perspective.

I learned something important in my visits.