Meant to be!
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
By: Heather Assenmacher

I fell in love with Annabelle (formerly Hannah), but another family snatched her up before I could! Don't worry, this is a happy ending though!

On a snowy December day, my boyfriend and I drove to the Humane Society of Huron Valley to visit the dogs. We had gone so many times by this point that we knew all the dogs, and enjoyed meeting the new guys and seeing who had gone home. As we were walking through, saying hello and giving nose rubs and kisses, I stopped at a new dog. She looked up at me with big brown puppy-dog eyes (which was nothing new, but hers were heart-melting) for a moment, and suddenly grinned and dropped to the floor, rolling over to offer me her belly. So of course, in an instant I was reaching my hands through the bars to rub her belly and watching her whole body wiggle with puppy-like joy. I looked at my boyfriend who was chuckling at her lovable antics and told him, "I've found her. This is my dog!" We had an interaction with her and walked her and I fell even more in love. We went home that day, making a list of the things we still needed for her. The next day, we had everything ready, so we drove back with a new leash and collar for her. We power-walked to the back to see her again...only she wasn't there. We hurried to the front desk and they told us that a family had come and adopted her. I handed my boyfriend my car keys, and he drove home as I watched my tears fall onto the vacant leash and collar in my lap.

Two weeks later, I was on my routine HSHV website check-up, seeing who had come in, who was still there, and who had gone home. I froze when I saw it a picture of her, up on their website. It was too early to call, so we waited, and at 11:00 on the dot we were in the parking lot of HSHV. When we got to the back, I walked quickly past the cages, not even looking at the dogs inside, just looking for her warm eyes and wagging tail. But she wasn't there. Disbelief shook me. How could this happen again? We went to the front desk, and they said that she was just in a temporary place and ten minutes later they had us in an interaction room and she was in my arms. We took her home the same day, and I couldn't be happier to have my dog.