Friday Feature

Beautiful Amelia!

It had been a few years since my Beagle, Maddy, had passed away. She was fourteen. I got the word from where I was living that it was ok to get another dog so I started looking. I had been looking for awhile and not one dog had caught my eye, then I saw the post for Amelia on Petfinder. She was a beautiful white dog with small black spots and a black patch over her right eye. But, what caught my attention the most was those eyes of hers. She had the most beautiful brownish/red eyes and I couldn’t help but fall in love with them. I knew she was my dog.

Amelia in the Slammer

I contacted Mary from Mary’s Dogs because that was the contact in the ad. I thought Amelia was in Deerfield, NH and thought that was great because I lived in Manchester, just a few towns over. Come to find out, Amelia was in South Carolina. That was scary! So many thoughts went through my head. Thoughts like What if I pay to have her come here and it didn’t work out?, or What if this dog was a hyper pooch? Or what if this dog had more issues then I could deal with? Well, I took the risk and paid to have her come up here. She was a year old pooch from the south and I prayed she liked snow.

Amelia at Rest

It was a warm night in early April when I drove an hour to go meet her and pick her up at the meeting point where she was supposed to be dropped off. She was one of the first pups to come off the large camper she came up in. I was so excited! Amelia and her travel mate were so nervous and seemed glad to be off the camper. They cuddled up with my oldest son, Brett, on the sidewalk as soon as they were able to. It was a quiet ride home and Amelia just curled up on the floor of the van for the hour ride to her new permanent home. I was expecting some household accidents for the first month, at least, but the first night she woke me up to go outside. At that moment, I knew we would be ok.

Amelia and Brett

It took a few months for her true personality to come out. Now, she is still the sweetest pup in the world. She is not a barker but is a vocal pup, with low growls, barks, and whines. She sure makes her presence known if she needs to. She has quite the personality and is a character. She doesn’t like it when the boys wrestle and gets in between me and them if we get too out of hand for her. I call her a little mother because she tries to protect the boys. And everyone who comes in contact with her adores her. Even people who aren’t big fans of dogs like Amelia. I get so many comments on her colors and personality. I have never seen a dog like her stuffed animals as much as Amelia. And I have never seen a dog photograph so well!

Amelia Ready for Snow!

I will never regret bringing her into my home. She is one of the most loving dogs I have ever owned. Rescue and adopted dogs are the best!

Jen P.

The shelter look...

After much nagging, my husband finally caved and gave in to my repeated requests to add a second dog to our family. It was time; our Border Collie/Lab mix Petey was almost five, and our daughter was eight. We had plenty of room in our home and in our hearts, and our friend Mary had just started her own rescue with Annette, her partner in Aiken, SC. The timing was perfect!

Wi Fi travels to NH... along with Louie

Mary tended not to pull tiny dogs from the shelter in Aiken, but I asked her to keep an eye out for me. Within days, Annette had found a little Chihuahua mix and sent me these pictures. We fell in love with her sweet little face, and it broke our hearts that she was stuck in a shelter. It is a leap of faith to adopt a dog this way. What is she like? Will she like us? What kind of past did she have? Why is she in a shelter? After dozens of questions were answered by Annette regarding her temperament and behavior, we gave Mary the go-ahead to bring her to NH.

What followed was the longest week of my life. I actually became so impatient that I considered going to Aiken and bringing her back with me. Don’t get me wrong – Mary and Annette were going as fast as they could. Annette was fostering the pup in her home and nursing her through her spay and other vetting. Mary was fielding my frantic questions and trying to keep me from boarding a plane.

Hugs from Mary

One day, a week before our dog was to arrive in NH, Mary called me and told me that she had managed to get our little pup on an earlier transport, and that she was arriving the next day! We were overjoyed! And finally, on September 8, I went with Mary to meet the transport in a nearby town. Check out the pic of Mary snuggling Wi-Fi that night. This picture always makes me catch my breath and tear up a little. Mary is completely enveloping her, reassuring her, and Wi-Fi’s relief is obvious.

I know Mary as many things – friend, piano teacher, nature educator, dog guru and minister – but this picture defines Mary for me. This is Mary in her element…this is why she does what she does.

Wi Fi with big sister, Cassie

Wi-Fi has been in our lives for almost five months now, and we don’t know what we did without her. She is happy as long as she is with us, whether we are taking a walk or relaxing on the couch. She is a true cuddle-bug! Cassie is her biggest fan. They have a special bond, and we love to see how happy they make each other. Petey adores her, and even snuggles with her sometimes. We worried that he may not want to share us with a new pup, but he surprised us all by becoming an even better dog than he was before.

Wi Fi with big brother, Petey

There are no words I could say that would adequately express our gratitude to Mary and Annette and all the generous people in between Deerfield, NH and Aiken, SC who helped bring us this lovely little dog. It is a noble, wonderful thing they are doing. It has been quite a journey, and we are lucky to have had them to guide us.

Dana V.

Scout in Aiken

“The time was right for a dog. I had said we’d not get a new dog until I finished grad school and I graduated in May. My girls, 5 and 7, desperately wanted a dog but I made no illusions to their future contribution to raising one. We had a couple of false starts with rescuing until a friend and coworker of mine, Kathy, intervened. She went crazy one night finding dog after dog after dog online … I looked at one after the other- how did one decide? Most were in a shelter so how would I know that the dog wouldn’t bite my kids? I knew I could not bring a dog home only to have to give it back. That was not something we could endure.

The choice of Scout was really fate, if you believe in such things. I forwarded all pictures to my mom- she studied them carefully. As I spoke to her as I walked home from work and she mentioned that she thought ‘Sarah’ had good potential. I had forgotten about Sarah (aka Scout) but she was described as good with kids, easy going, and funny. At 35 lbs, she was enough of a dog for my husband. The value of Annette vetting the dogs in her own place should not be under-estimated.

Exhausted after travel...

I went straight to work on the application and was on the phone with Mary, Kathy’s close friend, by dinner. She described the perfect dog for us and I knew she was our dog. I said yes! …and then told my husband. This was not our usual style of decision making but there seemed no point in investigating further. Scout would be ‘home’ in a week. Later I found out mom got two of the online dog’s names mixed up and was thinking of another dog- that is the fate part. We met Scout in a Home Depot parking lot. We have never been early for anything but there we were with nervous energy. We had heard transport had been traumatic for her and she would need freshening up. She came out of the van nervous, relieved, and exhausted. She is beautiful dog and her sweetness was readily evident. She fell asleep my feet as we drove home.

Overdoing the collar thing...

The next 48 hours were rocky… all dogs now leave Mary’s and Annette’s care with a martingale collar (nearly impossible to slip) because of Scout’s arrival in New York. Scout suffered ‘substrate confusion’ meaning she would not go to the bathroom on NYC streets. We took her on a long walk to grass figuring time and grass would fix things. On the way home disaster struck in 3 seconds. She spooked at an umbrella I dropped by her head and she couldn’t get away from me quickly enough. She pulled and pulled until she slipped her collar. Her speed saved her as she dodged cars to make her way back to Central Park in the heart of a city like none she had ever seen- just as the rain started coming down hard. We looked and looked in the pouring rain calling out for a dog we thought may be deaf (it was just sensory shutdown after transport) who had 3 names in three weeks. We searched, I spent the night in Central Park, we hung posters. I saw her once at 4 am but she wasn’t coming to me. The raccoon family had no problem seeing what I had to offer.

A girl and her dog...

What I had not wanted to happen had happened- I brought a dog into the girls life and she was gone after 36 hours. We all cried- Mary and Kathy included. The lesson for the girls that there were some things Moms and Dads could not fix. But Scout could- in the morning she followed a lady with a dog home, who fed her, and brought her to a vet on the other side of town. Thank heavens the dog without a collar (I was left holding that) was chipped. I had her home 16 hours later.

Family photo, Summer, 2011

For the next two weeks we called her prison dog because we walked her on two leashes. My husband started running with his North American Brown dog (Mary’s breed) and their bond tightened. She was housebroken and crate trained. She is smart and very motivated by food. My 7 year old woke up on the first day of school crying about hating school and Scout licked her to laughter. Scout tolerated my 5 year old’s “love” comfortably and calmly. She started knowing us as her pack and checking to make sure we are all walking together. She posts herself at the door to wait for anyone of us to return.

An Ostrich bone for power chewers

She still has her gremlins – fear of men, the front desk of our building, any person on the street- but those go away in her safe four walls. Here she is goofy, impy, and playful. As Kathy said, after hosting her for 5 days, “Hurricane Scout….NICEST animal on Earth!” She is simply the perfect match for us.

Thanks Mary and Annette!”