E-Mail This Article to a Friend Dog days Want to adopt a puppy? Not so fast. BY DAVID VALDES GREENWOOD

It was the home visit that pushed things over the top.

My hubby and I were not trying to adopt a baby. Yes, we wanted a new little life force to grace our home, but not a human one. We had clearly specified that we wanted a dog. And yet we were being treated like would-be parents on a baby chase.

It all began when the rabbit died. Being part of a gay couple, I do not use this term metaphorically, and it was not an occasion for joy. Our rabbit was a fine pet for six years, an affectionate bunny with unique quirks, like routinely guarding us while we showered. (What he was planning to do if we came under attack is unclear.) But rabbits have short lives and, with hardly a moment’s notice, he was gone.

We had no intention of replacing him with another bunny — I mean, come on, hadn’t we already had the shower-guarding cream of the rabbit crop? We settled instead on finding a dog. Factoring in our condo size, allergies, and temperaments, we narrowed our choices to small, smart, hypoallergenic or low-shedding breeds. By late summer, we were seeking West Highland white terriers, miniature schnauzers, miniature poodles, and poodle mixes.

Search the Web for these breeds and you’ll find what are known as rescue leagues: organizations devoted to finding new homes for dogs that have been displaced or abandoned. League Web sites are full of admonitions never to buy puppies from "puppy mills" — apparently evil places where cruel overlords force hapless bitches to breed day and night until they explode, while their mentally ill offspring are sold to impulse buyers. Or something like that.

Nobody wants to support the canine slave trade, so we committed ourselves to finding a rescue dog. (Past experience with animal shelters fudging important details — such as, say, doggy psychological damage — kept us from going the shelter route.) As soon as we committed to our new path, rescue leagues across New England collectively barked, "Not so fast!" As it turns out, they may not want you to buy puppies from a pet store, but you can’t just waltz in and expect a dog either. You have to prove yourself first.

This process began with application forms, from a simple two-pager to one that stretched on for seven. Personal references were required, and sometimes essays. We even had to cough up our former vet’s phone number, despite the fact that she’s an "exotics" specialist whose clients tend to hop or burrow, not fetch.

Our first rejection came from a West Highland white terrier rescue league, whose local representative sniffed that she rarely places her charges with couples who aren’t already "Westie people." She could put us at the bottom of a list, she told us, but would likely pass over us every time a real Westie person came along. Like a Connecticut blue blood keeping out the undesirables, she made it clear she’d accept a tasteful dog-lover into her country club, but not us.

We moved on to the schnauzer league, which accepted our application, but seemed to ignore it, despite continually posting plaintive pictures of homeless schnauzers on pet-adoption Web sites. We even broke down and paid a deposit on a schnoodle — a schnauzer-poodle mix — way off in Canada, but were warned we wouldn’t have a dog until summer.

As months passed, we turned to the poodle league. In addition to completing paperwork, we had to pay an application fee just to prove our intentions. Not only did we have to say why we wanted a dog, and then why a poodle specifically, but even why we wanted the size of poodle we were requesting. We answered as best we could and waited.

After a few weeks (and a cashed check), we couldn’t wait any longer, and e-mailed to check our status. We found our paperwork had been accepted — huzzah! — but that we’d have to submit to a home inspection: the equivalent of a poodle-appropriate social worker would be checking us out.

The day of the visit, I tried to make our condo look, I don’t know, like a happy den. The social worker came an hour late — obviously, she wasn’t waiting to get a dog — and toured the townhouse, firing off cheerful questions (where will the dog eat? sleep? poop?). She stopped to point out gravely that our back yard didn’t qualify as fenced-in because of the fence’s many poodle-size openings. But did this mean she’d have to toss our poodle-adoption file — or, worse, call up the Westie lady and have a good laugh at us together?

Happily, we passed inspection, but none of the dogs on the poodle rescue Web site was intended for us. More weeks passed and I moaned to a friend, "We might as well adopt a baby from Romania!"

"It’s easier in Romania," he replied without missing a beat. "You hand them a check; they hand you a box with a baby and say, ‘Enjoy.’ "

Around Thanksgiving, a poodle mix from another organization became available, and we dutifully submitted paperwork, soon finding ourselves approved for that very dog. Or, well, approved as finalists. The shelter had selected three potential families for this one dog, and had to present all our résumés to a board of trustees, as if we were trying to get into a doorman co-op in Manhattan. Sadly, we didn’t get the nod.

Just when we’d resigned ourselves to waiting for a summer schnoodle, the poodle people came through with a dog they thought might be a good fit. She was ours if we bonded with her at her (no joke) foster home. Pictures were exchanged by e-mail, a visit was arranged just before Christmas, and what do you know: the applications, rejections, fees, waiting, home visit, and final-adoption cost were all worth it. We were smitten.

Yes, it took us four months to do something that pet stores make possible in 15 minutes, but there was no cruel overlord and no pup slavery — just a little insanity along the way to one good rescue.

David Valdes Greenwood can be reached at impersonalstuff@aol.com