Adopted animals are capable of the grandest displays of gratitude you can imagine. When I was a kid, I wanted to get a dog. My father suggested that we should get one at the shelter. I was about 7 years old and did not know anything about the adoption process of a pet. So, I went and asked him how it worked and after explaining, we went to the shelter.
I was surprised at the number of animals that were there. They had cats, too. Some of these cats were kittens and a few of them were adults. My father asked me if I wanted a cat or a dog and I told him it would be a dog. We went to where the dogs were, and I saw a Lab mix that I immediately liked. He was still a puppy. The shelter staff told me that they had found the litter abandoned. They believed something had happened to the mother.
There was a total of 4 of them left. I picked one, and my father took care of the paperwork. The staff took diligent care of him despite having a large number of pets to look after. I took my dog everywhere I went. The dog was black, and I decided to name him “Blackie.” Blackie became my best friend and accomplice in many things that I did.
I used to like going hiking by myself and other times I went with my friends. But one thing that I always saw was that Blackie was always happy to be included in the team. It was an awesome experience for him as well. Imagine all the different scents he investigated on each trip. There were times that we were setting up camp and Blackie would just disappear on us for hours.
He would then come back looking very happy. He did some hunting himself. He would be trying to catch birds and squirrels every trip we took there. One of my friends had also gotten his pet from the shelter. His cat was 8 years old and a little on the chubby side. His pet would never leave his side. This friend would take him with us when we went camping, even on days we slept outside.
One family also adopted an unlikely pet. In their case, the pet was a deer. They had found her injured and took her home. The original idea was to help her recover and release her back into the wild. What this family was not counting on was that she would be so fixated on the cat she would pretty much forget anyone else was there. Saying that she liked the cat would be an understatement. Click on the video to see for yourself!
