Thanks everyone for your kind words. It means a lot.

Jasmine's mommy, myself, plus 3 other classmates (Sadie too, she went to school with me today. We left Sadie and another classmates dog in the car, and checked on them every 20 minutes) took a short trip to the animal shelter in the area. The shelter is now in a new location, and oh my gosh, it is BEAUTIFUL, and I mean it lol! She spotted a dog, Katie, a 7 year old Akita and cattle dog mix on the shelters webpage yesterday afternoon. Katie spent most of her life tethered on a chain living outside. She was then adopted, and returned after awhile. The shelter then found out that Katie was being trained with very negative reinforcement corrections (snout being hit, ears being pinched etc). So, today after class we went and checked her out. It was very cute- Katie warmed up to her right away, even ended up sitting in her lap for a bit. It was very sweet.

She's looking for the right dog, and not wanting to get another dog on impulse, which is most definitely the right thing to do. She's going to think about it for awhile, and I'll let you all know if and when she decides to officially adopt Katie. One of the shelter dogs' caretakers was reviewing my classmates information, and asking questions about her previous dog experience, what kind of time she has for a dog, and her living information. She told the lady that the dog would not be left alone often, hardly ever- she took Jasmine to school almost every day. She said that Katie has a high prey drive (being a cattle dog mix) and is somewhat pushy around other dogs, wanting all of the attention. The prey drive thing should not be an issue- although we do have 5 residential cats living in the lab at school, she can always be kept on a leash (as Jasmine did) or put in a run in the back.

So we'll see if Katie is the one!