It Was "Meant to Be!"

For months my wife and I had been eagerly waiting for a puppy that we had put a deposit on earlier that year. That January, we had found a breeder for Alaskan Malamutes near Seattle, Washington. She had told us that we would either be eighth in line for the February/March litter or we would be first for the April/May litter. She warned us that she cannot predict how many puppies her female would have so we may or may not get a puppy with the first litter. March comes around and there were seven puppies. Disappointed of course, we were hopeful and excited to get a puppy in the next few months.

We continued to wait and wait, while the months went by we had heard nothing from the breeder. We would email her and all we would get back would be a one sentence response saying, "Everything is on track," or "Mo puppies yet." Getting irritated with the lack of communication and the fact that we had given her a deposit, July came around and I had a week off of work for the holiday weekend and we had had enough. The night before the 2nd of July, we sent the breeder an email asking what the deal was. She had told us that the female didn't actually get pregnant and thought that she had told us. We were livid! She said that we would be now third on the list for the September litter. What happened? We were first on the list then moved down? None of it made sense to us.

That next morning I had called my mom to ask what to do because we were both at a loss. My mom told us to just go look on Craigslist, search "Husky Puppy" and see what pops up. We started to look and there were four puppies that we were interested in. The picture above was one of the pictures from the ad on Craigslist. We had already had a named picked out because we had been planning for months. We basically had a little nursery! We had everything needed for a puppy except for the food. We picked out the name Charlie because we weren't sure if we were going to get a boy or a girl. When I saw the picture I told my wife that that was it! That was Charlie! I reached out to the person who posted the ad and they said that he was still available! They were in Spokane, Washington, which is a four hour drive. We immediately said that we would be there as soon as possible and we had the money in cash, from saving for months. She told us to tell her when we get to certain points along our drive.

Once we arrived, she had asked us to meet in a parking lot because she didn't want strangers coming to their house, which I completely understand. As my wife and I were waiting, we were super excited and nervous. I kept thinking that we were getting catfished. Every car that would drive up I would say, "Is that them?" And, of course, it wouldn't be. After what seemed like hours, a car pulled up and in the passenger seat on a woman's lap, there was a fluff ball. It was one of my favorite moments! He was super excited and it was like he knew he was supposed to be ours. He was so comfortable and didn't seem to need time to adjust to us, which we were worried about. We feel like he was meant to be our dog!