One evening in November 2000, Matt comes over with his new roommate - a girl! She's an 8 week old basset hound puppy he named Gretchen. Since he was going to school during the day, he would bring her to me to babysit 2-3 times a week. Not long after that began, I started that old familiar ache to own a basset hound of my own again. By spring 2001, I was *really* wanting a dog, and I started searching rescues online. I found the perfect dog and called about him, but he wasn't available. In speaking to Gladys Eisenhardt, the foster mom, I found out about another boy who had had a failed adoption and she wondered if we might be interested in him - he was a handful, and young, no more than a year or a year and a half. Sure... we just want a dog that needs us.
We hopped in the car and went to meet him, and when we did, he broke away from Gladys and came running to us, and literally knocked both of us off our feet from our squatting position. The three of us were rolling around on the grooming room floor and Floyd and I said in unison, "We'll take him." Gladys emphasized again that he was kind of a problem boy so why didn't we take a couple of weeks on a trial basis to get to know him. Okay, that's fair. As we were driving off, Floyd rolled down the window and said, "Gladys, cash the check. He's not going anywhere."
Reggie sat on my lap for a while, or sat as close to Floyd as he could bouncing back and forth between us all the way home. I've never seen a dog grin as big as he was grinning. He was one happy boy! We were one happy couple, too.
That was our beginning with Reggie, our most perfect boy. We adopted him from Mid-America Basset Rescue, Inc., on May 26, 2001 and have celebrated that day ever since. I can't begin to tell all the ways Reggie has made our lives better, but I'm going to try.
