Meet Gilligan

A few weeks ago I bad talked the Washington Humane Society for their de facto "first come, first serve" adoption policy. Although I understand the policy (and in essence agree with it), I was very unhappy about the way it was presented to me.
Well last tuesday we visited the Washington Animal Rescue League. It is an excellent shelter, with a very helpful group of employees and volunteers. Alas, it's going through a remodeling which brought the amount of animals it can hold to a minimum. But we did meet a group of beagles who had spent most of their lives in cages with wire floors in a puppy mill. They seemed to be very kind, extremely shy, not housebroken, and probably in need of more work and patience than we could truly give one of them. Plus, splitting them up seemed just didn't feel right. So we sadly left. With a better understanding of their policy, we headed back to the Washington Humane Society.
Earlier that day I had seen, on their website, a cute 5 month old beagle that had been given up because his owner could no longer take care of him. His name was Dallas. We arrived and found him, by himself chilling in his bed. When you would put your hand in the cage, he would come over, lick you, and then once he realized he couldn't play, go back to his bed. I wanted to meet him. The first thing he did was thoroughly lick my face. He had me the second he calmed down and laid his head on my arm after holding him for a few seconds.
After asking how many applications there were on him (and getting an honest, although not what I was looking for, answer: "We can't say.") we decided to apply and not get our hopes up. Surprisingly, we recieved a call the next day, Wednesday. They wanted to start the process, and we had to wait for a volunteer to conduct a home visit. On Thursday, a very nice lady called and asked when we could conduct the visit... we of course said anytimes, and she said "how about tonight." That night she came over, in the rain, and went over the process and gave us some advice... she ended the interview by saying he could be picked up as soon as possible. Amazingly we recieved a call the next day from the adoption coordinator saying we could pick him that day... and at about 6 pm that evening we left the shelter with our new puppy.
We had thought of three names: Archibald, Optimus Prime and Gilligan (of course Optimus was my idea). Only Gilligan truly fit him. He's mischievous and cute. He's somewhat housebroken and has very little problem with his crate. He even buries his bone.
BTW, that picture is from the shelter but I'll soon be putting up his pictures over on flickr.