I keep looking at the local shelter website and thinking that I want to get a dog. I've never had a dog before. I should probably learn something about taking care of dogs before I start looking into adopting one.

Go volunteer at a rescue? Tell them you would be a first-time dog owner. A good rescue will match you with a starter doggie. (eeee! not biased at all)

Also maybe ethnicity, because there are the occasional derogatory comments about French-speaking people.

Oh, yeah. Lots of those. At least twice, when some kind of food or cooking has been screwed up, someone says something like, "Feed it to the pig. It's not even fit to give the French boy." And pretty much all the French characters we see are the faithful but somewhat stupid and superstitious servants.

Go volunteer at a rescue? Tell them you would be a first-time dog owner. A good rescue will match you with a starter doggie. (eeee! not biased at all)

I love little dogs (like, beagle-sized and smaller), but I'm scared of big dogs. I'm not sure if I could volunteer just with the little ones. I tried volunteering on the cat side of the shelter, but I discovered that, while my allergies don't really have any objection to one or two cats, they object a whole lot to 30 cats.

I think a shelter ought to respect it if you don't want to interact with big dogs. Little dogs need to be walked too, and it's not in anyone's best interests to have someone working with larger dogs who's not comfortable with them.

There are lots of individual breed rescue groups you could get involved with to start.

Man, so this week I was a good bit anxious about the start of the new school year. Lots of transitions in the partnering orgs staffs, lots of new kids.

But I just had a great time today. AND I finally have my high schoolers back. (Their previous dorm parents had them on the lockdown, but are gone this year, so Return of My Students!) They are so much my demographic.

I really enjoyed it, and I remembered that I'm good at what I do. Fuck yeah, new school year!

There are breed-specific rescues; maybe you could find one of them?

And I am now reminded that my nice mover made a derogatory comment against the French!

Fuck yeah, new school year!

Woo hoo!

Thanks for the suggestion. It looks like the only breed-specific rescue around here is for golden retrievers, though.

I would imagine a good shelter would work with you. Get pressure out of your comfort zone, it isn't a good shelter.

A lot of shelters want volunteers to walk dogs and interact with them. That could give you a better idea of the personalities of different dog breeds.