A Home Furever

Photo By Michele Danz 2015

In this day and age, the media focuses their reporting on the negative events that happen throughout the world, and repeats it over and over for days. When it comes to positive and/or heartwarming stories, only a few make it to TV or in the newspapers. Those positive stories that do receive media coverage have little time on TV and little space in the newspapers.

Since I believe we need to hear more positive stories to bring us up, rather than make us feel fear, worry, and other sorts of negative feelings, I am going to share one that surprised me – pleasantly. I will add that all to often, we hear negatives stories about teens and young adults. This story is about my niece and nephew.

A two day mega pet adoption event occurred recently in a nearby large city. Over 26 animal rescues, humane societies, and animal controls brought more than 700 puppies, dogs, kittens and cats needing loving forever homes. I knew that my sister-in-law wanted another small young dog and preferred to get it from a rescue. The lucky dog would mainly be for her daughter, so I let them know about this event.

On a nice Saturday, we found ourselves waiting in a long line that snaked around large agriculture buildings on the state fairgrounds. Every ten minutes, the line moved a few feet forward. Eventually, we started seeing people leaving with new pets, and the waiting crowd "oohed" and "aahed."

After 50 minutes of waiting, we finally entered the building, seeing the cats and hearing the dogs barking. My sister-in-law and I zipped along the long aisles, looking left and right at the crates holding all sorts and sizes of dogs. If a small dog was spotted, we’d practically pounced to get a look, only to see a sign, “Adoption in Progress” or it was an older dog – seven years or more.

Only a few minutes had passed since we’d entered the building and we had already seen all the dogs. Michele was disappointed. I tried to reassure her that we could still check other rescues and Petfinders.com. Kellilynn spoke up, “You were going so fast, John and I couldn’t see anything. We were just trying to keep up!”

We allowed the two kids to take the lead as we looked again. They found a small male terrier mix that was said to be seven years old and named “Archie.” They wanted to know more about him, so an adoption counselor answered all the questions they had, including the fact that he was older.

Mom-Michele asked her children what they wanted to do since the dog was older. I was impressed with Kellilynn’s answer, “Older dogs need a home too!” And her 14-year-old younger brother agreed.

“Elvis Archibald Avenger” a.k.a. “Archie” was the 128^th dog adopted that day as we left to take him to his forever home.