Age is just a number

Clay often joked that I always claimed that our foster dogs were "about two years old." There's some truth to that. We usually didn't know a rescue dog's true age and rescue organizations and foster homes are prone to underestimating a dog's age simply because older dogs are more difficult to adopt. Old habits are hard to break, I guess, because I've been telling everyone that Bailey is about two years old for some time now.

A picture of Bailey from November 20, 2023.

Clay recently found a picture of Bailey shortly after we got her that was dated in October, 2023. She was probably six to nine months old at that time, giving her a birthdate sometime early in 2023. That makes her a solid three years old now, going on four. 

Once I had a date of when we got her, I went back through old blog posts and learned that I had picked up Bailey from my doggie dealer in southwest Virginia on September 16, 2023. The blog post I wrote that night had this to say about her:

 "She barked at me fearfully when she first saw me and had a lot of say but I told her that I had heard it all before, many times from many shepherds. She warmed up to me in a few minutes and rode home beautifully in a crate in the van."

A few days later, in another post: 

"She's cute, she's sweet, and she's probably too smart for her own good. Someone needs to adopt her quickly to get her away from me. [Before I fail as a foster and keep her myself.]"

This started a deep dive down the rabbit hole, reading old blog posts from that period. It was fun to see all the dogs we had back then and it made me realize how different that our life was then from the one we are living now. Not better or worse, but very different. It was also fun to see Bailey as she was then and realize that not much had changed about her basic personality from then to the present time. She wasn't a foster dog for very long. I knew she would have a slot to fill in my future.

Looking at posts in early December, 2023, during the time that I was home alone with Covid, I realized just how attached Bailey had become to me then, and that's still very true today. Like other females in my life at various times over the years (both human and canine), she may not approve of all of my choices and actions, but she sure sticks by me in spite of them.

Covid care at its finest.