The perfect defective pet
Sherry Lankston was doing her usual social media scroll in her Seattle-area home before bed one evening when she spotted him: a young-looking husky named Harvey with a lopsided smile that melted her heart. Even though she wasn’t really looking to add a second dog to their household Sherry turned to her husband to tell him she’d found them a dog. The only catch? The dog was more than 1,250 miles away in San Diego. “So we kind of had to pause and I was like, ‘OK, well, that’s probably not going to happen.’ I even looked at flights,” Lankston tells TODAY.com. “I was like, ‘Why not look? Let’s see if I (can) find a flight to San Diego.’ And things were just outrageous — just to even consider that was silly.” But she couldn’t stop thinking about the sweet dog. The San Diego Department of Animal Services kept posting about him and Lankston eventually messaged a woman, Joy Ollinger, who had shared his photos and gotten to know the pup. Ollinger, who is a lieutenant with the San Diego Department of Animal Services, says she just wanted to get the word out about Harvey after seeing him stuck in the shelter for so long. “He was there for months and nobody was interested in him,” Ollinger also tells TODAY.com. “I was hearing people say that he was ugly or ‘Ew, look at him!'”
Joy Ollinger bonded with Harvey, bringing him into her office to give him a break from being in the kennel and buying him different puzzle toys once she noticed how smart he was. “He was a shelter favorite. I mean, the volunteers loved him. All of us that work there loved him,” she says. So when Lankston reached out with the crazy idea to make the trip down to meet Harvey and potentially adopt him, Ollinger was thrilled. “I was looking into different options on how we could get Harvey up to Seattle, and then Sherry told me, ‘You know what, I’m just gonna make the drive down.'” The next day, Lankston packed her car with her two young boys — who were on break from school — and their first dog, River. “He’s just so goofy. I mean, how could you see that face and just be like, ‘No?'” Lankston laughs. “He is so cute!” They drove almost the entire length of the West Coast, stopping at dog-friendly camps along the way. It took three days before they made it to San Diego. “It was love at first sight!” Ollinger says. “It was really cute.”
Sherri says the first time she and her boys met him, she “just knew” Harvey was their dog. “It’s a big undertaking to take on another dog, especially a rescue because you never know what you’re gonna get. But we knew,” she says. “First meeting I was like, ‘OK, he’s our dog.'” Then, the family made the three-day trek back to Seattle. Lankston says Harvey is already adjusting well to the cooler, rainy weather. “He loves the rain,” she says. “He loves splashing in puddles and being silly. I think he really likes it here.”
Adoption humor
Aunt Ruby and Uncle Arnie tried for years to have children of their own with no success and so they adopted a baby boy. Later that same year Ruby got pregnant and had another baby boy. One of the women of the neighborhood came to visit and asked, “Which one of those boys is yours?” Ruby replied, “They both are.” The lady rephrased her question, “Which one is adopted?’” After a moment’s thought Ruby replied looking her straight in the eye, “I have forgotten.”
A guy says to his buddy, “I’m thinking about buying a Labrador.”
His pal warns, “That might not be such a good idea. Have you seen how many of their owners go blind?”
My dog was my soul mate; we both took naps, we both skipped lunch, we both hated the vacuum… —Elayne Boosler
I want to adopt a child. A beautiful baby, one with a good job.
February 15th Birthdays
1980 – Chantal Janzen, 1951 – Jane Seymour, 1987 – Amber Riley, 1820 – Susan B. Anthony
1564 – Galileo Galilei 1954 – Matt Groening, 1972 – Alex Borstein 1964 – Chris Farley