Wanted: The Perfect Rozelle Family Dog

The Rozelles are on a quest for a dog.  Not because I'd rather not spend the money on a nice area rug for my living room, but because a promise is a promise.  And we promised two girls that when we moved, they could get a dog.  They are demanding that we cash in on that promise. And actually, I do want to get one prior to Molly starting school.  I think it will help her a lot with the tough transition.  And this big house is meant for filling up with warm bodies. And I confess, I think our family could use a dog.  Despite the fact that all the work will inadvertently fall to me, I want one too. 

A big obstacle in the process is that Jeff and Molly have allergies.  So automatically we rule out nice hairy dogs like Golden Retrievers and Bernaise Mountain Dogs.  Another minus is that Jeff is not a dog person, and is against anything he thinks, and I quote him, "could eat our children."  This would be pit bulls, rottweilers and the like.  We will not shell out unlimited amounts of money so this strikes Coton de Tulears and many Soft Coated Wheaten Terriers (sniff, sniff - these are my FAVORITES and I'm not giving up on them!).  

Our first preference was to get one from a shelter.  Guess what shelters are chock full of?  Pit bulls.  Tons and tons of pit bulls.  Then there are some labs.  Very un-hypoallergenic labs.  And there may be a few little bichon frise or something hypoallergenic, but these will be the kind with the big NO KIDS symbol.  So after some searching I sighed and agreed to housebreak a puppy.  (Half the shelter dogs aren't housebroken anyway).  We of course wanted to steer clear of bad breeders.  How unsuccessful.  Who is going to call themselves a puppymill?  Once we got to a house and saw sweet, adorable pups our kids fell in love with, only to discover that there were 25 dogs locked in a shed barking and snarling, clearly wary of people.  So we tried to explain to Molly that even though the puppy looked great, we couldn't condone this breeder's treatment of her dogs by buying her puppy.  Supply and demand and ethics are lots for an almost 11 year old with puppies on the brain to take in.  So we learned to weed out the prospects a little better. Tonight we thought we might have our place - all the dogs lived in the house, it was a Wheaten breeder and the 11 week old puppy was a price we could live with.  When we got there, we discovered that this was the runt and clearly not very healthy and very dirty - not a nice Wheaten coat at all.  The asking price could still buy me 2 area rugs - way too much to pay for a dog in that condition.  

So we've got two heartbroken girls, chomping at the bit for a puppy, and two parents who are exhausted from the search.  We've lost many hours of work to this process.  But, we love our girls and now I quote Anna, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!"  

If you have a nice little schnoodle or Wheaten who loves children and doesn't have fleas we will pay you a handsome sum of money to take it off your hands...