We decided to adopt a dog from the local shelter since it had been a while since we lost Molly. We went to the Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem, Massachusetts after seeing that they had a large selection of puppies on-line. Previously all the dogs that I had before were from breeders so we were unfamiliar with the logistics of adopting a puppy from a shelter. We arrived around 12:00 and went into the kennel. We looked at all the puppies and Rita and Alex totally fell in love with a little Lab-Mix called Gemma. We went back to the front desk and enquired about the procedure for adopting and learned that puppies that had a red card in front of their cage were already slotted for adoption. We hurried back to the kennel and saw that Gemma had a red card. Stifling our disappointment we looked around and every puppy but one also had red cards. We took the card for the one remaining puppy and went to the waiting room for our interview. Rita would not give up on Gemma though, she would go back to the desk hoping whoever wanted to adopt her would miss their interview or decide not to adopt.
When it was time for the interview with Emma’s potential owner the person was late, we were hopeful that she would not show up. Unfortunately she did eventually arrive so we reluctantly went out to get some lunch while waiting for our interview. When we came back we were surprised to see that the interview with Emma’s adopter was still going on! Rita kept a close eye on the front desk and for whatever reason the adoption did not go through. Rita pounced on the opportunity and immediately put our name in for adoption. It was if the fates wanted us to adopt her and Gemma became part of our family. Because Gemma in Portuguese means egg yolk we decided to call her Emma.
She turned out to be our best Christmas present.
Emma loves spending time with her Papa.
But her favorite thing is greeting her boy when he comes home from school.
Emma is a part of our family.
