Griffin: A rescue story

Our family dog, Griffin, is a rescue pet. While he wasn’t rescued from an abusive or neglectful situation, his story is still quite amazing.

I found Griffin at a business park around 40th Street and Broadway. Now, I will tell you that I’m not too keen on dogs as I frequently run into poorly behaved dogs during my workday because of owners who won’t guide their pets’ behavior. So, for the longest time, I resisted getting a dog despite my family’s wishes to get one for a very long time.

My daughter and I noticed this dog panting away in the heat and just watching us. He looked otherwise healthy with no signs of mange or abuse. However, there were no homes in the area and there were no missing dog signs up either, so I wasn’t sure what this dog was even doing in this business park.

I checked Craigslist to see if anyone had listed the dog as missing and there were no ads giving any close descriptions. So we decided to take the dog to the pound in hopes that the owner might check there.

He rode in the car without fear and liked to lick us a lot. A lot! It seemed to me that this had to be someone’s dog as he didn’t appear to be long out on his own. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a collar or any other means of tracking down his owner.

We dropped him off at the pound and provided them with the information such as where he was found. The pound estimated him to be a year old and put him down as a Dachshund/Pit Bull mix. I took some pictures of him before turning him over to the pound and put an ad up on Craigslist.

I told my wife and other kids about the dog adventure and showed them the pictures. They all wanted the dog, and I agreed that if the dog was not reunited we would rescue him. So began the process of checking his listing on the pound’s website to see if it would change from “lost” to “adoptable.” This seemed like forever for this to happen. Finally, the dog was listed as “adoptable,” and we made plans to go to the pound on my day off.

Well, the night before, I checked the listing again and the listing was GONE! Oh no! We were all distraught because we were worried we lost our chance to rescue him. Well, I know a thing or two about using Google to do some very site-specific searches and was able to find him again on the pound’s website. But instead of the particular shelter being listed, it was listed as PetSmart Charities.

I started looking on PetSmart’s website for dogs to adopt, but they have thousands of listings. I just kept searching and searching the listings. I decided to try searching the listings along with his pound ID number and — lo and behold — I found him! He was listed with the name Griffin and at the Scottsdale PetSmart.

Finally, we trekked up to Scottsdale and looked through all the kennels. The only kennel that had his ID number was a mismatch, but we found him in another one of the kennels. We spent some time with him there, and he was very interested in being close and nuzzling everyone. Once we got into the lobby area, he was jumping and licking all over my oldest son like he knew him from long ago.