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.

We 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. We find out who Barnie really is at the end of the month. Until then, we wait!

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