Love at first sight… (1/2)
I don’t believe in love at first sights, but there is one that I fell in love with when I first met her a little over a year ago. I meant to write this post last December marking our 1 year anniversary, but Valentine’s day doesn’t seem like a bad day to profess my love for her and everything that has come to since we brought her home. I had thought of keeping this account short, but I can’t help writing the whole story, so I am going to write it in parts. This part is going to contain the backstory.
I don’t know when I started loving dogs, I just always have. I think it might because my dad is a vet and we often had animals come to our house for treatment or maybe me (and my brother) have inherited our parents’ kindness and love for animals.
I have wanted to have a dog ever since I was a kid, we had one when I was a year or two old, but he was old and died before I could have some real memories with him. I only have stories my parents told me of me and some photos of him. So anyway, I always asked for a puppy as a birthday present on numerous occasions but never really got one (obviously!), partly because my mum thought it would cause a great pain when the dog passed away and partly because it is a lot of responsibility(I agree to both the points now). I remember a conversation I had with her when I was serious about getting one and she said, “What will you do when the dog has diarrhea?” and I couldn’t help but laugh at that, well it wasn’t a wrong concern to have either.
Anyway, so fast forward into my “adult” life, I was living in Pune with a flatmate(Shivani) and another close friend(Vatsal) living nearby who both were equally in love with dogs and wanted to get one for a very long time. We would always talk about how awesome it would be to live with a dog, go out on hikes, take it to the pet park and what name we would give our dog and whatnot. The place where we lived had a dedicated pet park and we used to often go there to play with other dogs and attend dog parties and pet festivals and our desire to get one grew even further. We somehow came across this NGO called Resq which is heavily active in Pune with rescuing animals and adoption. Me and Vatsal paid a visit to it and fell in love with the place. I could write whole other blog on Resq. We would often visit the adoption page on their website and look at puppers for adoption. We had quite made up our mind that we did not want to buy a dog after hearing the horror stories of dog breeding, not all breeders are bad but some can be.
I would also often talk to another friend about wanting to adopt a dog and he always suggested that instead of getting my own dog, I should take care of the strays, less responsibility but equally fun. I never got around that idea then, but I guess it wasn’t such a bad idea. I would also often have conversation about getting a dog with my parents and we would go in circles where they would come up with different situations I would have to deal with if I got a dog and I would convince them that I could handle that situation.
Anyway, one afternoon, I was sitting at my office desk working on something when my friend called me to his desk(we both work at the same company) and I saw Resq’s adoption form open on his monitor screen, the smile that page brought to me face! In the spur of the moment, we enthusiastically filled up the form and sent the screenshot to Shivani, she could not contain herself, I am pretty sure she cried! After a week, Resq called us to book an a visit for us to socialize with all the dogs that were up for adoption. Me and Vatsal visited the center the following week and they introduced us to dogs that they thought were ready to be adopted.
Shomit, the guy who handled the pre-adoption process, gave us a tour of the kennel area where they had more than 20 dogs up for adoption. We met a few and then came to her kennel.
We stood outside her kennel. She saw us and came wagging her tail and sat by the door with such an innocent face that thinking about the moment right now just melts my heart. It was there and then that I fell in love with her. Shomit introduced us to her, her name was Amy. We then had to move on to another kennel, it was hard for me to go away from her. We met this other pupper called Kevin, a cancer survivor, who was rescued by Resq. I think we then met a few other dogs, but Shomit suggested that Amy and Kevin were best suitable for us.
The aim for this meeting was to socialize us with the dogs and see how compatible we were with the dogs and vice versa. We were to spent half an hour or so with the dogs during this meet. So he first brought out Amy, I tried to play with her, but she wouldn’t give me a lot of attention. She was quite attached to her trainer at the time. Her trainer brought out a toy and played fetch with her for awhile, while Shomit told us about how they came to Resq Amy. From the story they told us, Amy was abandoned outside Resq because of a skin infection she had on her face and . They had to treat her for a few months before she was healthy. Here is a photo of her when she first came at Resq and a before and after photo of her. We then met Kevin, he was a sweet boi but we kinda had our heart set on Amy. We conveyed that to Shomit and decided that we would visit next weekend to socialize more with Amy.
So now that everything was almost decided, they had us send videos of our place of living and called our parents about whether they would agree to take her in case none of us could. Once they were assured about us, next was the actual adoption, which happened about 3 weeks later.
A few days before we were to go and adopt her, I started having second thoughts. I wasn’t sure I would be able to handle her and I thought she would put a blocker on my life goals and my regular routine. I thought I wouldn’t be able to go to dinners or parties because I would have to take care of her, I would have to plan my life and my day around her routine and a millions of other insecurities popped up. Of course I didn’t share this concern with Shivani and Vatsal, they both were so excited, they had whole schedule ready for Amy and split responsibilities on who would do what. I was secretly hoping I would be allergic to dogs and would be able to give an appropriate reason for denying the adoption. Anyway, I somehow carried on with my days and the day finally arrived when we had to adopt her, December 8.
We reached Resq in the morning, filled some forms and brought Amy home.
Ideally I should have been happy, over the moon with my life long dream finally coming true, instead I was awake early in the morning, anxious, choking up in tears, thinking about what a horrible mistake I had made by bringing Amy home. After a week of overthinking and anxious nights and early morning walks with Amy, looking at her ears thinking about her and how she would feel when we send her back, I confided my fears with Vatsal, I was too afraid of Shivani and of her reaction to this, we had only been flatmates for a few months, but I had known Vatsal for years. I told him about all my fears and how it wasn’t too late for us to return Amy since she hadn’t gotten much attached with us. He calmed me down and explained how Amy was not just my responsibility and how it could not be just my decision about returning her. Amy was his and Shivani’s dog too. Shivani’s family was also thinking of adopting a dog after having met Amy, so I suggested we send her to their place. Vatsal said he’d talk to Shivani about it. Once he did, we all sat together and talked about it. Shivani’s parents were not completely ready to take a dog in yet, so that was a dead end. Shivani was a bit disappointed in me, and I don’t blame her. She said I should’ve thought about all this before we got Amy, she had some previous experience with dogs and knew what all responsibilities came with a dog, so she was prepared, she was not wrong either. Anyway, after talking we decided we would keep Amy for a while and see how it went.
The topic of sending her away was never opened after that. They both tease me about this even today when they see how fond I have grown of her. So the days passed and I grew less anxious by every day but I was still avoiding posting about her online or talking much about her with people because I was not yet completely comfortable with her. I didn’t get much chance to be more anxious either because I had to come home for a month. I did miss her when I was away, but I didn’t talk much about her with my family either. I had missed her quite a lot when I was away, so when I met her after a while, it was a pleasant feeling. I started enjoying my walks with her, going to the pet park every morning, preparing food for her, missing her when I am in office, getting udpates of her from my flatmates at home, worrying about her pooping and peeing in the house before opening the house door, finding the house clean or messy sometimes, being welcomed by her wagging tail every time I step foot in the house, going for an evening walk, feeding her, running outside when it’s a poop emergency, extensively discussing her poop and pee with Vatsal and Shivani and repeating the whole thing again the next day.
Between all this, all of my anxieties died away and I started enjoying my time with her. I started talking about her with everyone, going out with her more often, posting about her online and showing her off in every family video call. Vatsal and Shivani, if you’re reading this, thank you for not giving into my idea of sending her away, keeping her was one of the best things we did. When I think back on the whole adoption, it’s seems crazy, all the things we did in the spur of the moment! ILU guys❤
I guess I’ll end this part here. The main content for which I decided to write the blog comes next, I did not realize I would want to write so much.
