Originally Posted by Rose_P (Post 5375157)

I laughed till I cried at this! It reminds me of our adorable little cocker spaniel Roux. We adopted her from a shelter in 1989. She was terribly sick with parvo when we brought her home, and we were afraid she wouldn't make it. For weeks after the symptoms eased all she did was lie around. We knew that she'd finally regained health when we walked into the dining room ready for a birthday party and found her standing on the table lapping at a huge crater in the middle of the cake. It must have been that peanut butter/chocolate frosting. Oddly that didn't make her the least bit sick. She never got up on a table again that we know, but one time my DH turned his back on a large ham sandwich that he'd just constructed, and the next thing he knew it had vanished without a trace. Pickles, onions, mustard, mayonnaise, ham, cheese, bun - no evidence to be seen, and not more than a minute had gone by. It was either Roux's doing or he only imagined he'd made that sandwich. He was sure he hadn't eaten it himself, and nobody else was around.

I would say that a cocker spaniel can be a loving, family friendly dog, but they tend to be stubborn and house trained only when it's not raining. The one we had didn't shed at all, but every 6 weeks she grew a grocery bag full of excess hair that had to be trimmed. I learned to do that myself. She was what is called a "sable" - colors that are not accepted as standard. It may have been the reason someone left her at the pound.

Originally Posted by Rose_P (Post 5375207)

Just wanted to mention that probably any dog breed you can think of has a rescue organization working hard to find homes for dogs who need them. Wheatens are no exception: http://www.wheatenterrierrescue.org/ (There may be more than one for that breed, but that's as far as I looked.) They usually have foster homes where the dogs are brought to live for a time so that someone familiar with the breed can evaluate the dog, stabilize any health issues, and write up information for prospective forever homes. There is almost always an adoption fee that covers the organization's costs in providing vet care, but it's usually quite a bit less than you'd pay to have a purchased dog spayed/neutered/immunized/chipped, which generally is what's been done by the time you adopt from these groups.