Barry Leaves A Lasting Impression

Barry’s Still Available?!

We were only supposed to have Barry for two days. He had a foster family who was taking great care of him. And he got along great with everyone in his foster home, including their little girl and all their other dogs. He even took a very sweet liking to their Vizsla. So, when Erin came up with the idea to house the dog for a few days so he could attend a few Meet and Greets around town, it didn’t seem like a big deal. We figured we’d get him, go to two events in two days, and he’d go right back to his foster home. But Barry had other plans.

Barry was a dog that we never expected to be available for so long. Sure, he wasn’t cat safe, but many of our dogs aren’t. He also had the distinction of being a prison graduate. Many adopters seek out our prison dogs for a couple of reasons. One is that it is a feel good story – having the inmates teach the dog, and honestly, vice versa. Another reason people like our prison graduates is that they are very confident dogs. You see, being in a men’s correctional facility with hundreds of men at once is a lot. Therefore, only the most confident dogs, ones who can adapt well and don’t scare easily, are picked to be a part of our prison program. This is exactly why we didn’t understand why Barry hadn’t been adopted. He came up in late fall / early winter of 2018, and yet six months later, he was still here. We didn’t get it. Everyone he met just kept saying he was a great dog.

Who Wants To Meet Barry?

Meet and Greets are one of the best things our group does, and is one of the easiest ways for our home fosters to get adopted. Our group’s social media team is amazing and they do wonderful work highlighting these dogs, but there’s nothing quite like meeting one of these guys in person. So, we always take any opportunity to get our available home fosters out in the public to meet people. We realize that this isn’t an option for many others, including Barry’s first foster family. They do not live close to any of our Meet and Greet locations, so unless we had an adopter specifically asking to meet Barry, we didn’t ask that they bring him to any events. However, since we personally didn’t have any fosters in our home, and we knew we could transport Barry to two separate events, Erin jumped on the chance to bring him along.

It took some coordination, but we finally figured out how everything would work. We would drive the nearly hour drive on Saturday to meet Barry’s foster mom and pick up the dog. We would then make a quick stop at the vet’s office to drop off a stool sample to see if he still had hookworm. Spoiler alert: he does.

 

Thankfully, the vet is across the street from our Nora Plaza PetPeople Meet and Greet location. So, we took Barry to hang out with the cutest black and white dogs for a couple of hours.  We would go home, get some well needed rest, and attend the next day’s event which just so happened to be the Meet and Greet we personally host at Metazoa Brewing Company. A volunteer was going to show up to take some professional pictures to use to promote Barry. Then, at 3:00, Barry’s foster mom was going to come and pick him up at Metazoa so we could make it to the other side of town for a cousin’s graduation party. It was all planned out. Until the storms hit.

The meteorologists were predicting pretty wild storms for that Sunday afternoon. Barry’s foster mom sent us an email saying she didn’t want to drive through the potentially violent storms, which was completely understandable. However, that meant that we couldn’t attend the graduation party. We didn’t have time to run home, drop off the dog, and make the end of the party. Strike one. Not a big deal, but disappointing nonetheless. Then, the photographer had to take her dog to the emergency vet. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to make it to Metazoa to get the pictures we wanted. So strike two. We were waiting for strike three, but thankfully our luck turned around.

Foreshadowing Of Barry’s Forever Home

A lovely young lady walked into Metazoa with her future mother-in-law. Ryan didn’t know it, but the mother-in-law happened to be Erin’s sixth grade teacher. The young lady, Rachel, came specifically to meet Barry. She and her fiancé were in the final stages of the adoption process and thought he would be a good fit for them as first time greyhound owners. We all talked for quite a while about how awesome Barry was and how we were impressed with him during the short time he stayed with us. We stayed at Metazoa until the rain lightened up, we all went on our way, and waited for a call that Ryan and I were waiting to hear. On Tuesday, Erin got the call. Barry was adopted by Rachel and her fiancé Joe. They had just moved to a new home, were getting ready to get married in a few weeks, but couldn’t wait for Barry. So, instead of driving him back to his foster family, we drove him to his forever home.