It was a Saturday afternoon and I had just dropped off my oldest daughter at a birthday party and had a couple of hours to kill in town with my two younger daughters. There was a PetSmart store nearby, so I thought we’d go in and look at the gerbils and fish for some free entertainment. Little did I suspect that it was Adoption Booth Saturday. As soon as I saw the stacks of occupied cages by the front door, competing thoughts flooded my head: Oh boy, puppies! and We are SO not in the market for another dog. With four kids and a maniacal border collie to take care of already, I did not need any more responsibilities to think about. But I thought the kids would enjoy perusing the cages and poking their fingers at the dogs and puppies, so I innocently let them at it. And all was fine, until we came to the cutest blond and white, big- brown-eyed bundle of a puppy I had ever seen. I am SO not in the market for another dog, I repeated to myself, and yet, I could not tear myself away from this one’s cage. The girls squealed with delight as this angel puppy cocked his head and stuck his white-socked paw through the cage wires to touch their noses. My heart was melting away by the minute. I am SO not in the market for another dog, I thought, as I took my camera out of my purse to snap a couple of pictures of the puppy. I am SO not in the market for another dog, I chanted in my head, as I found myself asking the booth’s volunteer about the puppy’s age and breed. He was a 10-week-old retriever/spaniel mix, with maybe a sprinkling of collie, and he was, of course, ready to be adopted.

In the car, I thought again, we are SO not in the market for another dog, yet I found myself calling my husband and asking, “Can I have a puppy?” He laughed, assuming I was kidding, and quickly changed the subject in case I wasn’t. I was only kidding, or so I thought, but after picking up my daughter from her party, I found myself driving back to PetSmart, “just to show the daughter who had missed out what a cute puppy we had seen.” Despite the fact that I had no intentions, whatsoever, of even considering adopting this dog, I was absolutely heartbroken to find that his cage was empty when we walked back into the store.

I was overwhelmed with a disappointment that came out of nowhere, since I was in no way even considering adopting a dog, but I told myself it was certainly for the best. I figured there was no way someone could foster such a perfect, adorable puppy and not want to adopt it, so it was the end of the story, and I pushed the whole ordeal out of my mind…. For a couple of days. Then I made the mistake of showing the puppy’s pictures to my husband, who was as enchanted by this dog as I had been, even though he was just as, if not more SO not in the market for another dog. By mid-week I found myself pulling out the brochure for the rescue organization that ran the adoption booth and e-mailing the group to find out if the foster family had mentioned anything about wanting to adopt. They wrote back, saying they had no idea what dog I was talking about. It took a few more days of e-mailing to figure out that there had been two rescue groups there that day, and I had picked up the wrong group’s brochure. They put me in touch with the other group, but they hadn’t heard anything from the foster family. It took almost a week of living with the anguish of wondering if I would ever see this puppy again for me to finally realize that I was SO in the market for another dog. I decided that if the puppy came back to the adoption booth, there was no way I was letting him get away again. My husband resigned himself to that fact, rather easily, too. Now to play the waiting game until Saturday morning came.

Luckily, my aunt and dear friend, Laurie, and her family came from out of town for a visit towards the end of that week. Having house guests helped to divert my puppy obsession a little, although Laurie mentioned the fact that they had toyed with the idea of getting a second Sheltie, and wouldn’t it be incredible if one happened to be up for adoption? So, she agreed that she would go with me to PetSmart the next Saturday, and we had fun dreaming about our imaginary new puppies, even though neither of us really expected our dream puppies to be there - purebred Shelties weren’t too often to be found at adoption booths, and I still believed the foster family would end up keeping “my” puppy. Still, it was fun to dream.

I slipped the puppy’s leash out of the girl’s hand when I went to introduce myself; I wanted to make sure no one else got their hands on him before I did. I asked the girl if he had been a good puppy over the last week, and she said, “yes, but he really bites a lot”. I ignored that, already deciding that I was going to take him home, no matter what. Still, I wanted to let the kids and my husband get to know him for a little while first, so we headed inside to find a place to get acquainted. To make a happy morning even better, when we walked through the PetSmart door, I heard Laurie gasp and she pointed to a cage and said, “oh my gosh, it’s a sheltie!” And sure enough, sitting in the exact same cage “my” puppy had been in the week before, sat a beautiful sheltland sheepdog puppy, looking as purebred as they come.

So, to make a very (very) long story short, we both decided to adopt a puppy that day. I can’t explain what an exciting day that was - watching the kids smiles as they played with the puppies in the store and hearing “do we really get to keep him?”, filling out the paperwork to bring our new friends home, and walking through PetSmart with Laurie, shopping for puppy food and toys with the coupons we got from PetSmart for being new adoptive pet parents. Then riding home in the car with the puppies on the kids’ laps, introducing our new puppies to our “old” dogs (our border collie, Lady, and Laurie’s first sheltie, Zoey, who had traveled with Laurie’s family and was also staying at our house), playing with our new puppies and the kids in the yard … outside of my wedding day and the children’s births, this day ranked right up there as one of my favorite days ever.

However, our first week with two families and two new puppies all in the same house was an interesting one. Our puppy, who we named “Riley”, truly was a voracious biter and constantly attacked with razor-sharp puppy teeth anything that moved, including my poor children and house guests, and within the first day he had destroyed a pair of Laurie’s favorite pants and several table legs. And Laurie’s puppy, who they named “Kairi”, had been rescued, half-starved, from the side of the road only a day before Laurie adopted her, so she was fragile and struggling to recooperate, plus she had injured her paw jumping from a porch bench at our house. So on one hand we had poor Kairi, who was so lethargic that she could hardly move, often having to be hand fed water with a baby bottle and was daily being shuttled back and forth to the vet for her paw, and then on the opposite extreme we had Riley, my “angel” puppy, who was terrorizing everybody like a whirling, biting Tasmanian Devil. There was more than once when Laurie and I exchanged silent glances, both wondering if we had made the wrong decision deciding to adopt.

Almost a year has passed since that first week, however, and Laurie and I are now both so grateful to have these amazing and wonderful dogs as part of our families. Kairi fully recovered , and is now a thriving, happy, and beautiful dog. Riley, with some patience and training, did grow out of his biting stage, and is now the most fun and loving pet I ever could have imagined. I am so thankful I followed my heart on this one, and not my head. Riley has a safe and happy home, Lady has a playmate, and my family and I have a new best friend. I wouldn’t change my decision to adopt for anything, and I know Laurie feels the same way.

In fact, we were so moved by the whole adoption experience, that we have been searching for ways we can give back to the abandoned animal charities, like the one that blessed our families in so many ways when they provided us with Riley and Kairi. Shortly after visiting a beach on a family vacation and being enthralled by all the “beach dogs” and the fun community of beach dog owners she saw there, Laurie came up with the idea to create a “beach dogs” website, to celebrate two of life‘s greatest pleasures - dogs and beaches! We also knew this could be our venue to help and spread the word about pet adoption and fostering. Adoption saves animal lives and provides people with a loving companion at a fraction of the cost of purchasing a purebred puppy. Not that we don’t love purebreds, too, and they are just what some people need and desire for specific purposes. But if you are just looking for doggy friend, I would strongly recommend adopting a homeless dog or puppy. The rewards are immeasurable.