We've had 3 dogs, all rescues, in the last 10 years. Our first family dog, Molly, was a miniature schnauzer mix. She was the sweetest little dog. When we adopted her, we were told she was housebroken, but we later learned that that wasn't exactly the case (after adopting our two later dogs, we realized our local ARL has no idea whether a dog is housebroken or not, based on the limited amount of time with the dog and the difficult situation surrounding the dogs living in a rescue). She was easy to train, though, and once she was trained, she rarely had accidents again, until she got sick many years later. She did bark a lot, which we got used to after a little while, and she loved to shred rope toys or rope-like objects. She was also very sweet, great with everyone, even my mom's young daycare kids when she ran an at-home daycare. She had been abused/neglected, but after a little while with our family you would never have known. She was a really great dog, and since she passed on a little more than a year ago we've really missed her.
After Molly died, we decided our house was too quiet, and we greatly missed having a dog in our family. After searching for a little while, my parents found Charlie, a tiny Yorkshire mix. He actually never even went to the rescue website--my parents found him literally the day he was cleared for adoption, on a quick visit to the ARL. We adopted him at about a year and a half old. While the ARL told my parents he was housebroken, we quickly learned that while he was (mostly) housebroken, he did have an anxiety/nerves/excitation problem that caused him to pee whenever he got scared. And, since he's very small, he's scared of almost everything, including (for a time), my father and older brother. He got over the father/older brother fear relatively quickly. Other fears, like strange people and every cleaning object in the house--mops, vacuums, washing machines/dryers, brooms, lawn mowers outside, etc.--took him a little longer to get over, but he got over that too. The longest issue was getting him to stop whenever he got excited, but after a while in a doggie diaper or diaper band, he finally quit. Now, he only very rarely has issues, and that's when there's something seriously wrong. He's a very intelligent dog; knows all our commands and the names of his favorite treats, and even figured out how to get into the treats that used to be stored on a high table (we still don't know how he got up there) until we finally hid them in a container with a locking lid.
After a few months with Charlie, we decided that he might enjoy the company of another dog, and started hunting again. After a couple months of looking, we found Max, a miniature schnauzer. We jumped through many hoops to adopt a second dog, eventually leaving our application to adopt a dog from the ARL on file so they could just transfer it to whatever dog we ended up finding. Since two members of our family are allergic to some breeds, it was very important to us that we adopt a breed we knew we had no problems with--which pretty much limited us to the schnauzers, the silky-haired terriers, and a couple other small-breed low-shedding dogs. We were very blessed that Charlie and Max got along well at their dog meet. He was mostly housebroken, but had accidents for a little while adjusting to a new home. He and Charlie got along really well; Max is older (about 3 now), but accepted Charlie as the leader easily, and seems to see Charlie as an older brother rather than as a younger puppy. Our biggest issues with Max that we have had to overcome are training difficulties and his fears. Like Charlie, Max is afraid of most everything--he didn't even want to get in the car with us to leave the ARL forever, he was so afraid. He still doesn't like car rides. He's afraid of most things in our house; both dogs hide when the vacuum or broom is around, and neither will go outside if they hear a lawn mower. We think he's scared of so many things because he was found by the ARL as a stray; they don't know how long he was on the streets but it's likely that that is where his fear troubles come from. Our other difficulty is with training and commands in particular. For some reason, Max has not and does not understand our commands, even the ones we *thought* we had taught him. He doesn't know his own name; he answers to his name, Charlie's name, and pretty much any other word spoken in the right tone of voice. He sometimes remembers what "sit" means, after thinking about it for a little while, but that's about it. We think it's possible that before he was a stray, he came from a non-English-speaking home, which would explain why he's having trouble re-learning all the commands he knew in another language. He is a weird dog in general though; he often walks along the tops of couches, and tries to sit behind the cushions on our couch (which is actually pretty funny to watch). He's about a foot taller than Charlie, and often steps on him or sits on him without realizing it. He also won't come in the house if Charlie isn't already there, and freaks out if Charlie goes away without him, like if we walk them separately. He doesn't jump up on furniture with people on it without a direct invitation stated several times, but if he wants a person's attention, he'll come right up to the furniture, rest his nose on it, and stare at the person until he gets his invitation. He does the same staring thing when someone is sleeping and he wants their attention--he gets right up in their face (if he was up on the furniture with a direct invitation previously) and just stares until the person wakes up and pets him. But he's a sweet, loving dog, and even with his eccentricities, we wouldn't trade him for another.
Every time we've adopted a dog, it has been after a long effort. We've stalked ARL pages for months; several people checking several times a day. When we adopted Max, I drove to two ARL locations (about an hour total) because the website had the wrong location listed, and the location we thought he was at couldn't put an adoption pending in on him at the other location. We lost several adoptions (now we're glad, because we have our boys that we love so much) before we got Charlie or Max. Whenever someone was off work, they would drive out to both ARL locations in the area, just to see what dogs were there. I highly recommend doing that with your rescues, if possible--in our area, it was entirely possible that a dog would be adopted before ever going to the website; that was how we got Charlie. It got to the point where we were checking the website 10+ times per day, someone driving out once per day, while we were searching for Max. We eventually got the ARL to put our adoption form on file so it could be applied to any dog at that location, which turned out not to be necessary, as we adopted Max from another location. But with all three of our dogs, it was totally worth the effort. They are and were such a huge part of our lives and our family, and we are so glad we put in all that time to find them.
I hope your adoption doesn't take too long, and you find your forever dog soon! Good luck!