My First Experience Adopting a Dog

What an amazing journey it is to adopt a dog. I'm very lucky to have such a supportive and dog loving family that allowed me to help rescue a dog. At age 22, I adopted my first dog! It was an exciting time to take that step forward and own my first animal. But, the whole story of how this even became a reality goes farther back. From my previous, posts you guys have probably seen me mention, I work at a doggy daycare. The doggy daycare worked very closely with HAWS, in which we foster dogs to help with socialization or if does were just breaking down at the shelter we were an alternative. A few fosters that came through, obviously got close to my heart. My customer dogs are like my own too. But anyways, back to the story. We just had lost our older dog to cancer. So my parents dog, Zoe was left behind with no buddy at the house and it had been a few months since we lost him. There was a foster at the time, who was a absolute sweetie, but was very shy with humans. She was very friendly with other animals. So, one night the foster was going to be alone - so I offered to take her home for the night. They both absolutely loved each other right away playing and running around our big fenced in yard. She was shy with my parents, especially my Dad. She had hard time trusting men, still does. We know she had an abusive background before coming up from Alabama. So one night turned into the rest of the week. When it came time to have her go back to the humane society to be put on the floor. I took her back for her to find her forever home that weekend. My family and I didn't last more than a couple hours though and decided she had found her forever home with us. So I went back and adopted Maggie myself. Fast forward to 2.5 years later and here we are. I think the most memorable scene that plays over in my head, is when I went to pick her up for the final time after her last vet check up. She came out and saw me from the across the lobby and she was wagging her butt so hard she could hardly walk and ran into my arms. It such an rewarding experience to be able to adopt and give these animals a home!

(Last night as foster)

(Officially heading home forever)