How did you choose your rescue dog?

[Finding_Serenity]

We knew we wanted a female puppy that would grow to between 30 and 50lbs (at the time I was in school so I had all day to train her) so mom surfed petfinder until we found a few that we loved how they looked in photos.

Went to the rescue, she and her sister were the last two of the litter as they were the “blonde” ones (all the other pups were black/dark chocolate colors with cream bellies that people love so much). We met the mother dog, loved her personality, and then met the two girls.

We picked her because she seemed 1. the most relaxed about being messed with (she seriously did NOT care that we were picking her up and down and petting her, where her sister was nervous) and 2. stupid. :lol: She got stuck twice in the fence rail between the yard and the deck while we were there and just looked around until someone came to unstick her :lol:

Mom and I had owned high intense and intelligent working dogs before and we didn’t want that intensity again with being at work all day once I finished school.

Turns out she was a late bloomer and is one of the smartest, sassiest dogs I know. She is seriously half cat in her sassiness… but she is also a super snuggler, extremely friendly, laidback (minus that puppy energy) and just all around a wonderful dog

[MKV]

I wasn’t really looking for a dog but when I met mine at the vet hospital in NY where I worked. She was boarding at the time. One of the techs said she was a foster dog so I went to say hi and I just fell in love. I liked her because she was an adult yellow lab mix, 45lbs, good with other animals, cute, and super friendly. The story her foster person told me was that she was a pregnant stray living under an abandoned house in Louisiana and was heartworm positive. She came to NY with a rescue group and had her puppies. They were adopted out through the local SPCA. I had her treated for HW and had her spayed. It’s been 3 1/2 years since I adopted her. She’s my sidekick.

[arab_roots]

Well my Dutch Shepherd wasn’t really a rescue dog, she was a washout from my friends program and he gives them away with the stipulation that they are spayed/neutuered. Well I was at his place for a clinic and I was looking for another dog but slightly older than my GSD puppy I had. I asked Mike about her and said if I wanted her I could have her. Thus started an awesome relationship.

My second dog was a GWP that I got from the humane society. I go there most weekends as I was looking for another dog due to my GSD passing away. I locked eyes with him and was thinking hmmm this could be the one. I continued looking and when I came back there he was staring in my direction…someone had said that he didn’t stop staring/looking for me even though I went around the corner. I met him and fell in love with his chill attitude. Him and my dutchie became buddies from the moment we got home. He didn’t have a recall on him(why he was surrendered) but it only took me about a week to put on him. The only time he took off was when I let them out of the car and went through the front door, normally I park in the garage. Once I found him he started to turn the other direction and run, but I was able to coax him to come to me. I think he thought I was going to beat him. After that incident he never took off again.

Both dogs just seemed to call out to my soul. I know this sounds funny but it’s true and I have no other way to explain it.

[gingerbread]

A year after we lost our elderly Greyhound mix, we wanted puppy energy, and went to an online lab rescue site (we wanted solid and loving and swimming…) to see what was there…a photo came up of three 5 month old female siblings–yellow lab/foxhound mixes–and I had the difficult job of deciding which puppy in the photo was right for us. They were being fostered in Alabama and we were in Connecticut, so there was no chance of meeting them face to face. I had to use my intuition! We chose one by the look in her eye, and accepted her blindly. She got off the transport truck from the South and immediately leapt into our arms, licking our faces as if she knew who we were already. She turned out to be perfect for us in every way. Strangely enough, we got to meet those 2 other puppies, as they were adopted by people relatively nearby(Ma, RI); one of them organized a “reunion” in a centrally located dog parK. Though the other 2 dogs were lovely, our Emily was easily seen to be the best fit for us.