A new rescue pup, a chiweenie, adopts us on Mother's Day. The day I was mom’d again.

On momma day, Doodle and I headed to south San Diego, near the US border. We spotted a chiweenie, a rescued Mexican street dog named Memo on Petfinder. We met him in the Walmart National City parking lot after his foster mom braved a four hour border entry.

I had wanted Memo for several weeks, and it became more urgent after Doodle’s recent diagnosis of advancing arthritis.

I hate the part where your best friend starts falling apart. It is the curse of dog years. We love them and they leave us. Not yet though, we still have time. I’m still fragile after losing my dad and aware of how quickly life can change.

It was hard to get the rescue pup up from Mexico.

Memo was a sweet boy and a very skittish boy. He startled at any sound. He couldn’t stand to be further than a few feet away from his foster mom, no matter how hard I tried to win him over.

I wanted him and yet he clearly didn’t want me. He only wanted his foster mom.

When she tried to bring him over to me, he jumped up and out of his collar and ran off.

He tolerated the meeting for an hour. I felt so bad for him - he clearly only trusted one person in the world. I didn’t want to take him away, after all he’d been through.

I told his foster mom that clearly Memo was HER dog. I don’t think she even knew that for sure until that moment.

That’s just how this works - they pick us.

Cynthia, the manager of Frida’s Furever Dog Rescue surprised me with a couple of back ups stashed in her car - two more chiweenies, younger, with more puppy energy, but also unafraid of new people and things. I try to adopt older dogs that aren’t as popular.

But then the two chiweenie puppies, twins of different moms, tangled their leashes with ours. One had a “mellower” mom and had a more “chillax” attitude for a puppy. He seemed taken with Doodle.

He had a sweet little soul and seemed like the whole world was ready and waiting for him, just like Doodle did when I rescued him from that hateful jail cell he was in, eleven years ago.

We snuggled, and that was that.

He was a parvo pup, one of two surviving sibs from a littler of six. That was his rough start. This was the easy part.

Off we went with New Guy, a.k.a. Willy, who adopted me (and us) on Mother’s Day.

He didn’t even know his name yet, so that was job #2 ahead.

Six days later, Doodle’s secret surf dog handshake took place on a SUP board while New Guy still wore a temporary name.

NG followed his big bro’s lead, and stepped right up on board.

That was job #1 - dog surfing.

On the Saturday after Mother’s Day, twin low riders paddled with me, under the brilliant blue sky.

New guy mastered a surf board faster than all four generations of my low rider rescue dogs before him.

Now if only he was house broken.

Some of these rescue dogs don’t always come as advertised.

I guess we all have something to work on.

Please join us in welcoming Nacho

to the Surf Dog Diaries.

Happy Mother’s Day to you, and us - all year long.