By: Cameron Cook

In the adopting process, there are so many things that can make people overwhelmed.  In this article, you’ll read personal experiences that could help you if you’re looking to adopt.

In this article, there will be three people who have given me their stories about their process of adopting. We have Caitlin Gibson, who adopted her 3-year-old pit/lab mix. Then we have Carla Lester a former foster care volunteer who also trains dogs on behavioral instincts. Lastly, we have Jack Brach who volunteers at shelters whenever he can.

First, we have Caitlin Gibson, who has recently adopted a Pitbull and Lab mix. She got her from the Shelby County Humane Shelter.

Caitlin said, “It was an interesting thing to experience, there (were) multiple litters in kennels, so it was very overwhelming. But I did have a specific checklist so that defiantly helped, finally after an hour and a half I found my dog. It was the calmest one out of the litter and walked right to me. They originally had her as just a lab mix, then I asked why, and they told me that with a dog have a pit in them are less likely to get adopted than any other dog because of the stereotypical stories of Pit-Bulls.”

That leaves us to wonder how often does that happens?

  • Kacey is a Pitbull/ Lab mix

Her response was this, “when I asked that, they said it’s almost all pit-bulls but if they didn’t think they had much DNA of Pit Bull then we wouldn’t include it.”

This leads me to my next person Carla Lester, she was and still is technically, a trainer that helps correct and forms the behavioral instincts of many dog breeds, including Pit Bulls. “When I was in a training school, I learned that according to the American Temperament Society, Pit-bulls are one of the most temperamentally calm dogs.”

Lastly, this person has volunteered at some local shelters around his area, and his name is Jack Brach. He has multiple volunteer hours, being that some he worked as a kennel cleaner, and some as a dog walker, and some as a “tour guide”.

Jack states “In my time of volunteering there have been so many shelters that had some many precautions with handling pets and what to say and what not to say to adopters, it was a very thin line on what we could say and not say.”

It was surprising to hear that, considering that people would want to hear everything about the pet’s problem and backstory. But that’s what I’ll end my article on.

This is Cameron signing off.