Quickly approaching, April 30th is National Adopt a Shelter Pet Day. If you have some extra love in your heart and room in your home and are considering adding a new pet, I encourage you to consider adopting from a shelter.

This post is a long time coming but it is the second in a series of posts that I am writing about our experiences adopting shelter dogs. The first post can be found here.

We have adopted 4 dogs from animal shelters and all of them have been wonderful pets. There are two things we do when going to get a new pet that I believe have contributed to us finding the right dog for us each time. First, we pray about it. Our prayer, “God please help us find the right dog.” Second, I have come to realize that we have let all of our dogs pick us. In very different ways each of our dogs has let us know that they wanted to be part of our family. Below is the story of Trooper.

Trooper was the second dog we adopted from the shelter. It was 2009 and Scout had been with us for 2 years. My husband’s work took him away from home for up to two months at a time and the girls (three of who still lived at home at the time) were at school or work all day during the week. Our routine during the week was that Scout and I would drop the girls off at school in the morning and when we returned home, we would go for a 30 – 60-minute walk depending on the weather. We would then come back home, and Scout would usually go lay on one of the girls’ beds while I did whatever chores I needed to get done that day. Around 2:00 p.m. Scout and I would get back in the van and go pick up the girls from school. When we returned home, we would go for an afternoon walk, usually one or more of the girls would come along. The evenings were usually busy with both Scout and I spending time with the girls.

The problem was that I felt that during those daytime hours when it was just Scout and me at home, we both were a bit bored. I thought we both needed something more – a puppy. I began praying about it and I asked my husband what he thought. He said that another shelter dog would be ok, so I began looking at the animal shelter website.

When I saw his picture on their website I knew I wanted to meet the dog they called Jack.

It was a Friday afternoon. My husband was not scheduled to come home for vacation for a couple of weeks. Our oldest daughter was working and the younger two would be away for the weekend. I went to the shelter, by myself. to meet Jack. According to their website he had come in as a stray, was about 6 months old and was a shepherd mix. We later learned that he was a Leonberger.

At the shelter I told the attendant that I was interested in meeting Jack. Since there was no one else there they brought him out to the lobby to meet me. The first thing Jack did was put his front paws on my chest, but when I pushed his paws down and knelt down in front of him, he sat down and held up his paw for me. As I took his paw in my hand, he looked deep into my eyes, so much so that I felt like he was looking into my soul.

That was when I knew that Jack, who later became Trooper, was coming home with me. He picked me.

We couldn’t have asked for a better dog (family member). He was a quick learner, especially with his mentor and best buddy Scout teaching what was acceptable behavior. He was fun and funny, a gentle giant and a loving and loyal friend. He was with us until January of 2022. He outlived the average life expectancy of his breed by several years, but it still broke our hearts to say goodbye and he will forever be missed.

Thanks for reading.