Happy Adoption Day! (Revisited)

 

Today is the fourth anniversary of the day we adopted our dog, Honey. Two years ago, for her second adoption day, I wrote a blog post about it. I’m revisiting that post today, with some updates and edits.

 

 

 

It was four years and a week or so ago that my husband finally said to me, “We can get a dog.”

 

I had been wanting a dog since we bought our house in 1996. He kept telling me, “In a few years.” Those years kept going by.

 

At this time we had my mother living with us in the multifamily house we had bought. I was her primary caregiver as her dementia progressed. It was a very stressful, emotional time. I think my husband knew that and thought that having a dog would be a stress-reliever and give me something to be happy about.

 

And yet when he said this I was a little reluctant. I’d gotten used to living without a dog, and I loved the freedom we had to travel anywhere for short or long trips or to spend an entire day out. But this wasn’t an offer I was willing to refuse. Besides, with my mother to care for, we weren’t able to travel anyway, and I had no idea how long the situation would last.

 

So the next day I was on the Internet, checking out adoptables. I’ve always had mixed breeds and loved them, and I wanted my next dog to be a “pound puppy.”

 

This is where I saw Honey. She was featured on the site for the RI SPCA. A cute picture of her little wrinkled head, with a bandana around her neck, captured me right away. She was about the size I wanted. She was female, which I also wanted.  “A shy Shar-Pei–terrier mix,” the profile said. Okay, she’s shy. So am I. It sounded like we’d be good for each other.

 

 

It turned out that “shy” wasn’t the whole story. Even the receptionist flubbed a little when she told us that Honey had been there “a long time.”

 

When we walked back to the cages, we saw her little curled tail in the third one from the left. We approached the cage gently. Instead of rushing to greet us eagerly like the other dogs, Honey hung back. She walked around her cage, through the door to the run, back in again. Obviously nervous. Once she came up to the front of the cage as if to take our measure, but made no attempt to make friends.

 

In spite of some trepidation, I knew she needed us. Later we found out that she had come into the shelter with her sister, who had been adopted a while earlier (she was friendlier) and that Honey herself had been adopted out but brought back because she was aggressive with children. Well, we didn’t have children, so we didn’t have to worry about that. Still, those weren’t things I was happy to hear.

 

On Wednesday, July 7, my husband’s day off, we went to pick her up. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but she jumped right into the car and seemed fine on the way home. At home, we kept her out in the yard for a while. She sat. We sat. We petted her, stroked her, talked softly to her. She didn’t move, didn’t try to get to know us, didn’t look at us.

 

I was afraid we’d made a bad mistake, taken on too much. I was stretched so thin with my responsibility for my mother, I just didn’t know if I could handle another one. I didn’t know if I had the love to give her. We had bought a crate for her, as is now recommended (though we’d never done that with any of our family dogs when I was young). She wouldn’t go near it, even when we put treats in it.

 

The burden of trying to train this standoffish, timid dog seemed to be too much. I considered taking her back, all the while thinking, how can I do that to the poor little thing?

 

And yet she won me over. Once I accepted our commitment to her, I began to see the cute, endearing things about her. Her funny expressions. Her enthusiasm for walks. How quickly she bonded with us. No, she isn’t an easy dog. She’s reserved and reactive to children, strangers, and other dogs. She turns into a raving maniac when she sees a squirrel. But we’ve learned to live with and appreciate her eccentricities, which make her special to us.

 

And she has made considerable progress, with training and the security we’ve given her. Although she doesn’t express love as much as other dogs do, she has her own ways. She jumps on the couch with us and cuddles between us. She rolls over to ask us to rub her belly. When I crouch down next to her and put my face near hers, she pushes her nose up against me in what I call her “Honey hug.”

 

 

She is family, and we love her, and we know she loves us. And each year on July 7 we celebrate her Adoption Day, the day she came into our lives and changed us.