It's been nearly three months since my beloved Lucky succumbed to cancer and went to that dog park in the sky. It hurt for a while, but now I am ready to love again. So what do I do in this Brave New World of the Internets? I search for my new canine love online.

The process is eerily similar to internet dating. You troll the appropriate sites for attractive candidates, scroll through the pictures looking for one that pleases your eye, then read the written come-ons like this:

Hi. My name is Muffy. I am a fixed, 1-year-old Rotweiller-Pug mix, who was left at the North Central L.A. Shelter after my family decided to move to Ghana and become missionaries. My foster mom says I am still growing and I need a lot of attention and love. I enjoy walkies, belly rubs and raw hide treats. I'm good with children, but I'm a little curious about cats and I might accidently (on purpose!) bite them from time to time. But not in half, or anything terrible like that. If you think I'm the doggie for you please write to my foster mom at PugRotsRUs@aol.com.

Then you contact them, make a date to see if there's any connection. If there isn't, you pat them a few times, make nice doggie talk and make vague comments about how you have other candidates you want to meet before you settle on one. But if there is a connection, oh yeah, you know it right away. Then you take your new doggie companion for probationary period to make sure they don't have an unnatural fondess for the taste for human flesh or a nuerosis that entails hours of non-stop barking. If you two can stand each other past the first couple of weeks, it's a match that will mostly last until death do you part (usually the dog's demise comes first, dog years and all that.)

You too can try internet dog dating thanks to web sites such as the L.A. Animal Services (Northeast shelter seems to have the best selection, FYI). Craiglist L.A. has a slew of people trying to find new homes for dogs, and there's a bunch of breed-specific, such as the Southern California labrador retreiver rescue site (where I spotted my Lucky) and georgraphic specific sites, such as the Echo Park Animal Alliance.

Anyhow, time to go. I have a date with a border collie.