When my husband and I got married I was coming off of 6 years as a single mom. It was just my daughter and I for all that time, and she had a hard time adjusting to “sharing” me with someone else. We decided to look into getting a dog so she had a little company.
So one afternoon we were out for lunch after church and I looked at my husband and said, “Hey, we should stop at the Humane Society and see what they have for dogs. They are open on Sundays, right?”
So we meandered on down to the Humane Society, reiterating to my daughter that we were NOT getting a dog that day, we were just looking. The Humane Society was indeed open on Sundays, and when we walked in they asked what we were looking for.
“Something medium to large because I don’t like little happy dogs,” was my reply.
An employee showed us to the dog area where we walked past kennel after kennel of sad, barking, scared dogs. My daughter liked a medium sized terrier named Hank, so we asked if we could take him out and look at him. They ushered us into a little room, that was what I imagine prison cells to look like, and brought Hank in. He was a nice little dog, but he was sneezing almost uncontrollably. I asked why he was sneezing so much and was told that none of the dogs see a vet before they are adopted, so they didn’t know. I didn’t want to get into a situation where we couldn’t afford medical care for a dog, so we decided to keep looking.
The staff told us to go to the local pet store because they were sponsoring an adoption event there, and there were a few more dogs for us to meet. We drove to the pet store and looked at the dogs, but none were the right fit for us. We felt a little defeated as we got in the car to go home, even though we hadn’t planned to actually come home with a dog that day. It was so sad to see all those dogs in kennels, with little human interaction, and with their likely fate being euthanized.
“Did you see any at the Humane Society you would like to look at again?” I asked my husband.
“Well, there were those two little ones that were cute, but you said you don’t want a little dog.”
“Well, just because we look at them doesn’t mean we have to take them home.”
We decided to go look one more time and make sure we hadn’t missed anything. When we walked in the shelter staff asked if we were back to look at Hank again, but we asked to see the two little dogs that were in the kennel together. They ushered us back into the prison-like room and went to get the dogs.
The brought the two little dogs in, and I should have just handed over my checkbook. Was one extremely friendly and happy to be held by us. She was free with the kisses. The other one was terrified and hid under a bench. My daughter had to drag her out to even look at her. I instantly liked the friendly little dog, but wasn’t so sure about the stand-offish one. We asked how much their adoption fee was and they told us $165. Each? Yep. I gulped a bit because that would eat up a large portion of the money we had set aside to get a dog, and we still had to pay a pet deposit, buy supplies, and get them spayed. They agreed to give us a small discount if we adopted them both, and quite frankly, I didn’t have the heart to separate them anyway.
The only history that the Humane Society shared with us was the the dogs came from the same home, and there were too many animals in the home. They believed that they were siblings and were under a year old. The dogs were horribly neglected. The fur was matted tightly everywhere and their nails were so long they curled around and poked them in the paw. Once done with adoption procedures , we have planned to take dogs to unusual pets vet as they can provide top-notch medical care.
We signed some paperwork, wrote a big check, and were off with our new dogs! Keep reading tomorrow for part two of our doggie adoption story!
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