Reserved — now we wait

Right now his paperwork is further along than our nerves.

We reserved Barnie a few weeks ago through Pawprints to Freedom — a 16-month-old boy who's spent most of his life in a shelter in Romania. He's booked onto a transport, and if everything runs to schedule he'll arrive in the UK around the end of September. Which means, for now, we wait.

I hadn't appreciated how much of adopting from overseas is waiting. On paper Barnie's the straightforward case — he's been in the shelter since he was a pup, so his vaccinations and the rabies 21-day rule were sorted long before we came along. For us the wait is really about transport: a place on the next run has to line up with the rescue's own schedule, and from the moment you say yes to the moment a van pulls up can still be well over a month. There's very little you can do to hurry any of it.

So we've been doing the only useful things there are to do: reading, and getting the house ready. Working out where his safe space will go. Buying a harness and a slip lead, because everything I've read about transport day says the same thing — a frightened dog on arrival is a bolting risk, and you plan for that before he's anywhere near home.

Mostly, though, it's the not-knowing. We've had photos, a short video, and the rescue's own descriptions of him — more than I'd expected, and enough to fall for him already. But everyone who's done this says the same thing: you don't really know a dog until he's out of the shelter and out of the van. I find out who Barnie really is at the end of the month. Until then, I wait — and I write.

What is certain is our commitment to make things work and to offer him a real home.