Tuesday 10 July 2012

Adopting Saffy

When my parents finally agreed to getting a dog we hadn't thought much about what type of dog we actually wanted.
My mum had big dogs in the past, and we knew a few people with labradors and retrievers so this was our first idea. And they sounded great- generally smart and easy to train, playful, cute- ideal pets, no? Well after a bit of thinking, we realised that taking on a labrador or similar would probably be a lot of hard work. They require a lot of exercise and can be pretty strong, which might have made it difficult for my younger sister to walk the dog.
The next idea was to get a spaniel because of their smaller size. What put us off here though was all the talk about inbreeding and the damaging effects. It was after researching this breed that we decided it might be better to adopt a dog rather than buy a pedigree dog from a breeder.
We had been to see Dogs Trust Harefield a couple of times before but hadn't found any suitable dogs. Now though that we were more certain about adopting a dog, we were able to register to be able to look at puppies that came into the centre as my mum doesn't work so would have been at home during the day. Quite quickly we were told about some Jack Russell puppies that had just come in. Although we went to see them, we doubted whether any of them would be what we wanted. Previously we had always assumed that terriers were small, yappy dogs- the opposite of what we wanted! We were shown to an enclosed outdoor pen where the puppies were running around. Saffy was one of three from her litter, and at this point all of them looked identical! It was my mum who picked Saffy- she wanted the playful, energetic one (something I'm sure she must sometimes regret!). A short while later, and a quick phonecall to dad, we were making the arrangements to adopt a puppy. Dogs Trust were great, everything went through very quickly even with them making thorough checks that we were suitable. We were able to go and visit Saffy at the centre whenever we wanted in the days before she came home to us which was always exciting.
Bringing her home was a lot of fun- watching her run around her new house and garden. She was a perfect dog and settled in really quickly. We had a crate for her that had a bed in it and a sheet over the top to make it feel safe and cosy, and this was one of the first places she went to.
It's now been over three years since we adopted Saffy and everything is still going extremely well :)

2 comments:

  1. You're right, Labradors are generally smart and easy to train but very strong. My Lab Maya is all of those things. She is generally very well behaved but even after 5 years is still very difficult to handle on a walk.

    Good for you for going through the adoption method!!! Jack Russells are smart too so you should have a lot of fun with training. Can I suggest a book called "101 Dog Tricks" by Kyra Sundance? You and your sister will have a lot of fun teaching Sapphire these tricks. My dogs Maya and Pierson have a few of them down.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ok great, I may just see I can find that! We're running out of ideas for things to teach her simply because we don't know how to do anything else, so a book might be the inspiration we need

    ReplyDelete