On January 26, 2019, Tessa, an 11 year-old lab mix, left the shelter. Tessa has passed now, but this day is about new beginnings and hope. Tessa was an inspiration to me in many ways and I hope that she will be an inspiration for you. Tessa would want her story to inspire people to take a chance on an overlooked dog. She would want to create more advocates that stand up for dogs like her. This post is the story of how I found Tessa and my reflection on the first part of Tessa’s life with me.
I want to start by saying that I am not the only person who saved Tessa. The first time I heard about Tessa was through an Instagram post from Susie’s Senior Dogs, written by someone volunteering at the shelter where Tessa lived. She was honest about Tessa’s medical and behavioral needs. She talked about how amazing Tessa was and how badly Tessa deserved a home. Thinking back, the content of the post was not what convinced me to meet Tessa. I was drawn to meet Tessa because the post was clearly written by someone who loved her. I thought if someone could love her that much, that I could, too. I wasn’t really looking for a dog because I had recently lost a dog. But I knew that Tessa deserved a chance, so I inquired about her. I “dated” Tessa for several weeks by going on walks with her and visiting her at the shelter before I decided to start fostering her.
I went to a local dog shelter to pick up my new foster dog, Tessa. There was a going away party with a room full of people who loved Tessa. There were smiles and tears and Tessa moved through the room greeting all of her friends, letting them all know that she was thankful for them and saying her goodbyes. You might be wondering why so many people came to see Tessa off. Tessa was leaving the life and people she had known for 6.5 years. That’s right, Tessa spent 2,367 days at the shelter. January 26, 2019 was the last day she would ever spend there.
I was, admittedly, feeling a lot of pressure to be the perfect mom for Tessa, and I was so nervous that Tessa would not be able to adjust to living in a home. I didn’t know what to expect from a dog that had spent half of her life in a shelter. I did know that she was on medication for seizures, which had to be given every 12 hours. I knew that she was reactive to other dogs and I needed to be vigilant watching for oncoming dogs every time we left the house. I was only fostering Tessa at first, because I was possibly going to have to leave for 4 months and I couldn’t commit to adopting her. But I made a commitment to Tessa that I would do my best to keep her, and if she had to go back to the shelter over the summer, that I would adopt her as soon as I got home.
Tessa spent her first day at home exploring the house. She walked around and sniffed everything. She played with a few of her new toys and I learned how much she loved to play fetch. She knew to use the bathroom outside, but wasn’t quite ready to ask me to take her out. She mostly ignored me and wasn’t so keen on being pet. Her first day was an average first day home from the shelter. I was relieved by that and thought that everything was going to work out just fine.
Things were going well, Tessa started to settle in within the first two weeks. She loved cooking and would stand between me and the stove, looking up at me while I cooked. She loved having a piece of bacon with breakfast every Sunday morning. She always inspected the groceries to make sure that they were safe. She checked my clothes and bags every time I got home to make sure that I wasn’t a mom imposter. She played fetch in the yard for as long as I would throw the ball. She loved walks and required at least one long walk per day. These always occurred on her time and she barked incessantly when it was walk time. She walked with purpose and rarely stopped long enough for strangers to dote over her and give her some head pats. She was a lady who liked to keep a strict schedule. She always put herself to bed at 9 pm, whether I went to bed or not. She loved to ride in the car, resting her head on the open window. She especially loved when I drove fast. She loved to sleep in my bed and somehow sprawled out enough to take up ¾ of my queen size bed. Most importantly, she loved me and I loved her.
We had some hard times, too. She wanted attention, no matter what I was doing. Working at home became impossible because she would rest her head on my computer while I was typing or bark at me if I didn’t let her. She would try to pull blankets off the couch with her teeth if I wouldn’t give in to her barking. She was an obsessive licker and would lick my face, arms, pants, or feet excessively. It was so difficult to stop that I would have to get up and leave the room. She licked the floor and the couch. It drove me crazy. There were so many things that drove me crazy. We battled with some of these things for months and others for the whole time that I had her, but I didn’t stop loving her and I didn’t give up on her. I worked really hard to understand what made her act the way that she acted. I was patient with her and I tried to help her with these behaviors because it would make us both happier. And it did.
She was never “perfect” in the sense that she did everything that I wanted. She was perfect because she did so many things that made me laugh, even when I was frustrated. She was perfect because she always did her best.
Tessa was just like any other dog, despite living in a shelter for half of her life. She was a glowing example of how resilient dogs can be. It can be scary to take in a dog that has lived in a shelter for so long. I worried that she would hate living at my house because she was leaving her home of 6.5 years. I worried that it would take forever for her to adjust, if she ever did. But Tessa surprised me. She became the dog that she was meant to be, living her life where she belonged: at home.
Note:
You might have noticed that I never circled back to her medical or behavioral issues that were disclosed to me before I took her home. This is because they didn’t matter in the end. There was never a time that I thought, “Wow, I can’t stand that she can’t be around other dogs” or “It’s seriously disrupting my life to give her medication every 12 hours”. Adopting any dog means that you will have to make some modifications to how you behave or how you schedule your life. Don’t let a dog with some preexisting medical or behavioral issues scare you away. It’s always worth taking a second to think if you can accommodate a special dog like Tessa. You might be the only chance they have.
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