Adopting a New Pet

Adopting a New Pet

The choice to adopt or purchase a new pet is a personal one. Everyone has different reasons for choosing either. For myself, adopting seemed like the right option.

It was the fall of 2012. I was in college at the time, and we had just gotten a new batch of dogs and cats from the shelters the program works with. That was when I met Maxie. It was a friend of mine that was assigned to her for our animal care rotation. I ended up spending some time with her, and within 10 minutes I knew she was perfect.

Maxie was a 1 year old spayed Lab cross . I’m not exactly sure what she’s crossed with, everyone has different ideas.  Her brother was also there, though you’d never guess they were from the same litter. She is the perfect mix of calm and energetic, that is what made me love her. Maxie is perfectly content relaxing and not doing much. But she loves her walks, actually, she really loves any time she gets to spend outside (so long as it’s not raining, she really doesn’t like that). When she gets running, she can really go! But deep down, she was very quiet and shy.

Now the difficult part  was convincing my parents that she was a good fit for us. With being in school, I was still living at home. So I needed them to be OK with it (otherwise that would have been a whole other problem!). Thinking the odds would be better in my favour, I intended to take her with me when I moved out. Along with that, we only had our cat Mickey at that time. Our other cat Snowball had passed earlier that year. So I knew with that as well, I had a good chance of talking them into it.

As luck would have it, I managed to convince them to let me bring her home for a weekend so they could meet her, and we could see how Mickey would react. Everything went amazingly well that weekend. The Saturday night we all sat down and talked. My dad pointed out she didn’t bark, destroy anything, no accidents in the house. She had no faults whatsoever . He sounded so surprised, I remember thinking, “Is that a bad thing?”.  That night we decided to fill out the adoption application.

A few days later, it was officially confirmed I was bringing her home! I just had to wait until the end of that shelter’s rotation with us (typically they would stay for 2 to 3 weeks at a time) to bring her home. It was a long week and a half wait that seemed to drag on. Finally, she was home. Maxie settled in very quickly, made herself right at home. Mickey was not too impressed, but he tolerated her. He still tolerates her, but no matter how hard she tries he would rather do his own thing.

This year will be 4 years since we adopted her. As I should have expected, my parents have become quite attached to her. They decided she couldn’t leave when I do (I guess I’ll just have to get another dog for her to play with!). She’s opened up and become more confident since adopting her. She has always had a wonderful personality, but now we are seeing it so much more. I couldn’t have asked for a better dog. You can see how happy she is, and it makes me happy seeing how much she has grown. For me, adopting her was one of the most rewarding things I could have done.

• Kaitlyn