Dear MD SPCA,
We adopted Angel from the Maryland SPCA when my wife and I got married close to 20 years ago.
We named her Shyann, because she was a very shy dog at the time. When I first met Shyann, she wanted nothing to do with me. However, when I sat down with her, she jumped all over me. While it’s cliché to say, “I knew she was meant for our soon to be family,” that’s exactly what happened.
Shyann was a handful. I remember one day I came home with bags of groceries. Shyann (while I was literally 20 feet away putting stuff in the fridge) knew the bag that has the bread, chewed a hole in it (like the size of a quarter). To this day, I have no idea how she managed to pull even a single slice out. I looked at her, and she slowly strolled under the table. I could not help from laughing, and that memory is stuck in my head. Did I get mad? No. I loved her as much as I did my own family because well, she was my family. Shyann slept at the foot of my bed. I always would sit up at night to make sure she was good and pet her if I had any problems sleeping. She was the best dog, and she was my first dog in my life, as I never had a dog growing up. Shyann died two years ago November. To this day, we still cry, we still mourn, and we still keep her memory alive.
You will never know what it means to love a dog unless you have one. No dog will ever take her place, but we can adopt and give another dog the same love we gave her. This is a story of life, of love, and of how important it is to adopt. There are dogs each and every day, amazing dogs, begging for a home, love, and to be part of a family. This story is to show how the wonderful dogs some folks pass by could be the ones that forever change your life.
John Gfeller VI
