the time we went to pick up a uhaul

Last Thursday we & our housemates moved across town to a new home and decided to rent a Uhaul to transport our large furniture. I have not done this before. We moved to California with only the belongings that could fit in the Civic, although we packed a ridiculous amount of stuff into that tiny little gas-saving vehicle.

Anyways, Jimmy rented the Uhaul online and we went to pick it up before the move. I anticipated a massive fleet of white, boxy trucks lined up in a specific order in a well-maintained parking lot of a Uhaul-only renting facility. The Uhaul mecca of Redding. 

No, no. We carefully followed our trusty iPhone directions to a back-ish road toward this little building that looked like it used to be an automotive repair shop. There was the not-so-massive fleet, matched by the not-so-massive office of this little rental shack. 

What was massive was the dog lying on the floor of this tiny office:

Have you ever seen Balto? I think we met him that day. I think Disney came to Redding and based that movie off this dog. 

He was beautiful. And huge. I sheepishly went to pet Balto and pretty quickly he decided to stretch out. I sat on a chair. One of two in this tiny office. 

Then Balto got bold. He put his front paws up on the other chair right beside me, which I swear made him about a foot higher than me, put his nose in the air and then lowered it and stared at me directly in the face. 

That's when I got up the courage to ask what kind of dogs they were. 

"Wolf hybrids!"

Let me tell you, there's something really interesting about the sudden realization that there's a WOLF staring at you in the face. A REAL LIVE WOLF. And I love dogs. Dogs have never scared me. But this wolf was definitely establishing dominance, or so it felt. 

Eventually he got back down, laid down on the floor and the owner went on to explain how loving and caring and incredible these Malamute/Wolf hybrids are. 

Then two more crawled out of back corners. One was too shy to come near us. The other one (which was, I swear, the size of a small bear) mad ea brief appearance:

Apparently the owner used to breed them and all three were related. 

And did I mention huge? And really quite beautiful. I was almost convinced that one day we should have one. Then everyone that visited our future home could be able to walk away with the statement I was left with:

Today I stared down a wolf.

Not what I expected on a trip to pick up a Uhaul.