Valentino

Who needs a boyfriend when you have this face to come home to?! Valentino is always happy to see me. It’s like I just came home from China or something when I walk through the door.

Valentino is a rescue pup from Arkansas. I think he really rescued me though as I had recently lost my father to suicide shortly after adopting him.

I adopted Val (for short) almost three and a half years ago. My girlfriends all have dogs and I finally caved. I always said I would never be that girl picking dog shit up off the street but I am now that girl! As for my best friends and their dogs, well they eventually all moved out of the city with their significant others and left me to wade around in what I call the “shallow end of the Manhattan dating pool.”

Anyway, I found little Valentino on Petfinder.com through a rescue group called, Dog Tired Ranch. The woman who runs the rescue group had me on the phone for like an hour! Her sweet southern bell accent made my ears bleed so I finally caved and said, “YES,” send Valentino up north and three weeks later Valentino took the doggie underground railroad up to the big city!

Here is Val just freshly rescued from Dog Tired Ranch and all skin and bones!

I dragged my friend Paulo with me to pick Valentino up at 4:30am in New Jersey. I just really didn’t want to drive a car. I sold my car when I moved into Manhattan and did not miss driving! So I rented a car and promised Paulo he could sleep over the night before but he had to promise that he wouldn’t start humping me. You can read about Paulo in Seeing the Sites, Chapter 5 in my book Nicknames. Paulo barely kept his promise of not humping me so I slept on the couch and gave him my bed that night.

Paulo and I drove into east bumble fuck NJ and we waited online outside the large dog-rescue tractor trailer with the other soon to be doggie mothers.

Finally, Valentino emerged! He was probably 7lbs soak and wet and smelled REALLY bad but when he looked up at me with his beady little black eyes it was love at first sight!

I washed Val up when we got home and the rest his history. We have been joined at the hip since. Below are pictures of Val today. He is a city pup and his hobbies include: barking at the neighborhood pit bulls, chasing squirrels in the Central Park, chasing after Diva his sister-cat (I got custody of the cat), sizing up my dates, and eating anything off of the floor. Speaking of dates, Val once peed on one of my dates. There was no second date but that ended up being for the best!