It’s National Dog Day! I’m not entirely sure which nation this applies to, but for the purposes of this site, I figure it’s National Dog Day whereever we have dogs. So now it’s National Dog Day in Panamà! Some of you might not be familiar with our dogs, so I’m going to take this opportunity to introduce them in more detail.

Both of our dogs were adopted from Muttville Senior Dog Rescue in San Francisco, CA. As their name implies, they focus on finding older dogs new homes, so all the dogs in their program are at least eight years old. We’ve adopted three dogs from Muttville in total – our first was with us for almost three years and crossed Rainbow Bridge in late 2019.

The Doxie

I try to keep away from real names here, so we’ll call our dachshund mix the Doxie. We’re not sure what his lineage is. We’ve never had a wisdom panel done, but his body is a little bit longer than you’d expect, and his legs are shorter than you’d think, so we think there’s dachshund there. There’s also some speculation that he has some chihuahua in him, but he might be a bit big for that.

The above picture is quite appropriate for him, because his tail is always wagging. He’s such a happy boy, and very well behaved. We’ve had dog-sitters call him the perfect dog, and offer to take him if we were looking for a new home for him (as if!). His ears are very expressive and you can tell when he’s not happy. Consider the picture below, which was his intake picture at Muttville:

When we adopted him, we had just lost a little black dog, and when I was ready (it took a few months), I knew I wanted another. Black dogs have a much lower rate of adoption than other colour dogs, and so I was specifically on the hunt for a little black dog. Then the Doxie was featured on Muttville’s page.

We don’t know much about his history, other than he was an owner surrender in Solano County. The person who surrendered him claimed that he was 9 years old at the time, which is why Muttville pulled him. We adopted him in March 2019, which would make him 16 years old. All the vets who have examined him lately say he’s definitely not 16, but he is a senior dog (his muzzle is a lot whiter). We’re guessing he’s probably around 12.

The Doxie loves to snuggle, and we suspect his last owner was older, since he’s perfectly content lying on a couch all day. He’s also never quite learned how to play, so we think he was an only dog, too.

These days, he’s living the retiree dog life, and prefers staying inside than being out on our balcony.

The JRT

This is our JRT, so dubbed because he’s a Jack Russell Terrier mix. We’ve always had black and white dogs, and our previous Muttville rescue had been a fox terrier. We knew we wanted to stay with a smaller dog, so when the JRT came up on Muttville’s page, we wasted no time in driving down to adopt him.

Similar to the Doxie, we don’t know too much about his past. We know that he lived with another dog, and his previous owner passed away. The owner’s caretaker tried to keep both dogs, but eventually had to surrender them to Yolo County Shelter. The JRT was in the shelter for three weeks before getting pulled by Muttville. His estimated age was 8 years old, which is probably pretty accurate. His face has gotten whiter, and his eyesight is certainly not what it used to be. We tried finding out what happened to his buddy to no avail. We adopted the JRT in March 2020, about a week before the entire world shut down.

As a result, the JRT thinks that having someone home all the time is normal! Both of us were still working at the time, and we ended up finishing our careers in remote roles. He is also unabashedly my dog. Mr. RO calls him my stalker dog. If I am out of a room for more than a few minutes, he will come looking for me. We had to get an extra dog bed and put it by my work station because otherwise he’d just lie on the floor at my feet. When I go outside on our balcony to enjoy the view, you-know-who is always there.

He’s also more of a snuggler than I would expect from a terrier, but I think that might be because of his former owner. He is very cute and often gets the most attention from passersby when we take both dogs for walks. He’s a favourite of the security guards in our apartment building, and now they have a little routine. Whenever we take them outside, JRT will stop and look into the security guard office to wait to see if they will come pet him. If they don’t, he’ll bark at the door.

In every one of our other homes, the JRT was always cold. I had a full wardrobe of fleeces, sweaters and coats for him. We haven’t needed those since arriving in Panamà. But even with the heat here, he still likes to bake. Almost every morning, he’ll ask to go outside on the balcony just for that purpose.

Both dogs have had quite the adventure since they’ve joined our family. They’ve moved from California to Washington to Illinois to Texas and down here to Panamà.

It’s a dog’s life.