A 60-pound lap dog
Saturday, March 7, 2015
By: Kristina Warner

After five years, I finally felt ready to adopt again after losing my 14-year-old labs

In March of 2009, I had to say goodbye to my best friend and black Lab, Shadow. I was devastated, as I'm sure many pet owners are familiar with. The following year, we lost our second dog, Shadow's best friend and partner in crime, Buster. Both were well into old age, at 13 and 14 years old, but the loss of both of them, only a year apart, was hard to move on from. I wanted to honor the memory of them and felt that getting a new pet too quickly would be doing a disservice to Shadow and Buster and to the new pet.

Finally, this past May (2014), I knew that I was long overdue for a dog. I looked into several different rescues, I visited the Nebraska Humane Society multiple times ... and then one weekend, just before a meet-and-greet for a local dog rescue, my dad suggested, "Let's go to the Humane Society one more time, just to see what's there before we go to the meet and greet."

So we went. We paced the kennels a few times but kept coming back to one black Lab in particular. My dad commented on how intelligent his eyes were - a deal breaker for him, in considering dogs - and I couldn't help but notice how sweet he was. When we finally visited with him and an adoption counselor, he was very nervous and shy. He needed a little work on his leash, but considering how badly Shadow and Buster both used to pull, this new Lab did really well. Within just a short time, I knew that this was the dog I wanted and soon, we were signing the papers to take him home.

The second I got him to my house, he waltzed right in, sniffed around a little bit ... and then made himself right at home on my bed. He was unbothered by my cat, who was also adopted from the NHS when he was just a kitten in 2001, and before the weekend was up, Levi (as I had renamed him - staff at NEHS had temporarily named him George) was fully situated into my household.

He had a couple of mis-starts - the stitches at neuter site tore, and the rest of May seemed to be dedicated to getting him fully healthy again. But now, we're creeping up on being a family for almost a year.

Levi and my cat, Puck, are the best of friends. They wrestle and play-chase in the house and Levi will nudge Puck until he grooms him. They both sleep in my bed and lay together in the pet bed. Levi comes to my parents' house daily, where he ... gives my parents' cats a wide berth, but it's his second home. He wrestles with my dad and gets to run the backyard with their toy poodle.

Despite being 60+ pounds, Levi still thinks that he's a lapdog. He'll climb onto my lap when I'm on the couch, or in the recliner, and he'll lay on top of me. He loves to cuddle and play tug of war with his squeaky toys. And he LOVES squeaky toys. I can't help but buy him a new toy every time I'm at the store.