Bailey Porter
Editor-in-Chief

Dear Honey and Zooey, This weekend, I was so overwhelmed. When I found out you were finally being adopted, my long-term girls, I didn’t know how to react. Nine months is a long time, and I can’t say goodbye quite yet.

All of a sudden, the biggest challenge was not finding you safe, loving homes. The homes had found us in some miraculous turn of fate. Instead, I was trying to trust your new families and relinquish this self-inflicted sense of responsibility I had for my favorite girls. I say self-inflicted because even though you weighed on my heart so, and I was worried we would not find you homes, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I was nervous all weekend. My mom and I confessed to each other that we woke up in the mornings thinking about you and even daydreaming bizarre scenarios that revealed your new families as characters out of a bad scary movie (or worse, the most horrifying episode of “Animal Cops”). Sorry about that.

To those who don’t come back from family vacations with more photos of their dogs than themselves, I must seem strange and a tad obsessive.

I admit that I even got to the point of trying to convince my volunteer buddies that you were going to miss the shelter, and me. Yes, I know, that is crazy. But that’s how hard it was for me to trust someone else to take over. And I know how selfish that sounds. But I knew you were safe at the shelter – that Susie and everyone promised you could stay here as long as it took to find you the best homes and that that would be okay because we would all love you as your temporary family.

And I knew you thrived on your weekends when the volunteers and kind folks at Petco showered you with affection. Remember that Bob and Barbara came every Saturday to walk you and give you treats.

Zooey, I know you always got seconds because Barbara loves you, and Honey, I know you loved your walks with Bob but I think he got even more out of it than you did.

Know that every week at least one Petco customer paused by your cages so sad to discover that you still weren’t adopted.

I might have been the most selfish of all. You both bring me such joy. Some early Saturday mornings, when we load five dogs and as many cats into the Suburban to go to our Petco adoptions in San Dimas, I’m grouchy.

Honey, one look at your face turns me around and reminds me I wouldn’t trade my Saturdays with the shelter animals for all the lazy/crazy Saturdays in the world. Pit bull terriers are known for their smiles, you know; and you have the widest grin I have ever seen. Your eyes crinkle up in the corners like an old woman who has smiled for 80 years and your joules stretch back to reveal the most adorable thick pink gums.

Zooey, your energy is contagious, and you have helped someone who spends most of her time darting here and there feel not so alone in her overactive tendencies. I have watched you grow and trust people more and more.

You both inspire so many people to care about things outside themselves. I watched as a humane society worker with something of a hardened exterior cradled your face in his hands, Honey, and whispered, “Bye Mamas.”

Please tell your new families that we will remember how they opened their homes to you. And remind them that you come with baggage – a bunch of well-meaning, if not slightly eccentric and at times pushy, foster moms, grandmas and friends who want visitation rights.
Enjoy, girls. We love you.

Bailey Porter, a senior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at porterb@ulv.edu.