A Family for Kira

Kira came to our house 19 days ago (not sure about the hours and minutes), which may not be such a long time, but it was our longest foster period to date (Francie, our longest before Kira, was here for 8 days).

The first few days were extremely difficult, due to Kira's parvo quarantine, along with the fact that she was so fearful, knew absolutely nothing about living in a house, and was just a puppy. I remember the first night, I couldn't be out of her sight for even one minute without her barking from fear. I played peek-a-boo games with her, by leaving her in the ex-pen in the backyard and walking around the corner of the house where she couldn't see me. I'd count 1-one thousand, 2-one thousand...until eventually, I was able to count to 20 without her having a barking fit. With all the instability in her life, she needed to learn that I was going to come back. Every day since, she has amazed me with her resilience, intelligence, and desire to please.

After several adopters fell through this past week, I was contacted by a woman who lives about 30 miles from us. She had seen my Craig's List post, fallen in love with Kira's photos and description, and emailed me twice and left me a voicemail, all in the space of an hour. She said she didn't mean to be a pest, but she wanted to make sure I was getting her messages. I thought, wow, THIS is someone who is REALLY interested in Kira.

We made arrangements for Kira and me to visit them yesterday morning. I met the woman and her husband of 23 years in their home, where they live with their 18-year old son and 12-year old daughter. They also have three race horses, two cats, and a 7-year old male shar pei. Their 14-year old German shepherd/Rottweiler mix died recently, and their shar pei has been very lonely.

The shar pei liked Kira instantly, and although Kira was a bit shy, I knew she'd warm up to all of them. I wasn't sure how Kira would do around the horses, but she was much braver than I had anticipated. She was much better than Cabana would have been, for sure, and I was so proud of her.

The family fell in love with Kira's sweetness and said they were ready to take her that afternoon. So I took Kira home, brushed her for the last time, and took some final photos to remember her by.

I'm grateful to you all, my blog readers, for following Kira's story. I felt your support and encouragement throughout, and I know you share my happiness. The perfect family did come along, and Kira is going to have a wonderful life. I will miss Kira and the way she would give me thank-you kisses before eating her food, how she always wanted whatever Cabana had, and especially how she followed Cabana around, worshiping at her heels. I wonder if Cabana will miss her or if she's just happy to have everything back to normal. Probably some of both.