Although One Tail operates in Chicago, it is an entirely foster home-based organization. That means that some of their foster homes are outside of the city. Which is great. Suburban homes tend to have yards, big happy families, lots of love for dogs who need as much as they can get. However, for a car-less couple that relies solely on public transportation, this meant that we were relying on the foster parents to bring our little girl to us. Unfortunately, because Raisin clearly is the greatest dog ever, while the family was fostering her, they apparently fell in love. And while One Tail allows foster families to officially adopt dogs, they do not allow this when a pending foster-to-adopt is in place. However, the difficulty came when the foster family started pushing off the date for Raisin to begin her foster period in our home. At first the foster mom couldn't get out of work on time. Then there was some bad weather (and in December, of course, there really was some very bad weather).
However, after nearly two weeks of waiting and being pushed back, our One Tail adoption coordinator, Anna, finally decided to take matters into her own hands and go down to pick up the Raisin. Tragically, the Sunday she was supposed to get her, we had the first blizzard of that year. Conditions were terrible and it certainly wasn't worth her risking her life so we could have Raisin that weekend (of course, that is easy for me to say 1.5 years later when I have Raisin every day...during the moment, I was pretty devastated).
Finally, later that week, our fearless adoption coordinator, after working a full day at her job, drove an hour down to the suburbs and an hour back to snatch up our little pittie. That night, David had class until the mid-evening. When Anna arrived with Raisin, I was by myself and nervous as could be. I met them downstairs at the service entrance and we brought her up the elevator. This may have been her first ever experience with an elevator because she was visibly nervous (though this may have been from her fear of small spaces...something we discovered when trying to get her in her crate in the following days...)
When we got in the condo, I was very worried that Anna would judge me to be a bad potential dog mom if I did something wrong with respect to introducing myself to Raisin. So while every natural instinct in my body told me to get on the floor and start playing with her, I held back my urges and politely talked with Anna while holding my hand out to Raisin and allowing her to take her time checking me and the new place out.
Raisin was super sweet and very timid (something that is hard to remember when one meets our exuberant pooch these days). Our trainer described this period as a type of shell shock, and looking back on it, I would have to agree. Raisin was in a state of near constant change and we were just another new set of people who were, hopefully, going to be nice to her like the last few. Within a day, Raisin started to come out of her shell and transformed into the playful, but snuggly, girl that she is today.
But back to the day of her introduction...After a little bit, David came home and met our girl. Raisin immediately liked him better and I admit, I was VERY jealous. David also seemed to completely forget his silly pit bull bias and seemed quite smitten with our little lady. We spent a bit of time talking about Raisin's needs (a new type of harness, high-protein dog food, etc.) Then it was time for Anna to go. She quietly snuck out and just like that, we were a family!
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