Writer Feature: Why I Want to Adopt

Editor’s Note: Please welcome to our writer roster, Chris Ventura! Chris is a Virginia Tech student double majoring in communication and English. Once he graduates, he hopes to adopt one dog and one cat. We are excited to have him on board!

Imagine this: you’re 7 years old. You go to your best friend’s house and he shows you the tiniest puppy you’ve ever seen in your life.  All you want is to adopt your own puppy to squeeze and play with!  There’s just one tiny problem . . .

Your eyes get watery and red, and you sneeze every time you get anywhere near a dog.  That’s the childhood I had.  No cats.  No dogs.  All I had was a handful of fish behind the glass of a tank and some mischievous turtles we kept in a plastic tub in our backyard.

With my fish tank

That’s not to say I had a bad childhood.  Some of my fondest memories were with my fish and turtles.  I remember dropping fish food into the bowl with a little shaker (I also remember tasting the fish food, but that’s not something I recommend).  The flakes would float to the bottom of the bowl and the little beta would eye them for about a millisecond before snapping away.

I remember coming home from school and finding an empty plastic tub where the turtles were supposed to be.  After half-an-hour of crying, my dad found them hiding in my mom’s garden.

So that was my pet experience in grade school: eating fish food and playing hide-and-seek with my turtles.

As time passed my cat and dog allergies actually went away, but all those years of going dog-less actually made me scared of them.  That was until one Shih Tzu changed everything.  His name was Snoopy and he belonged to my then-girlfriend, Danni.

The adorable Snoopy

Snoopy had white fur and looked like a mop without the stick.  The little guy couldn’t hurt a fly, but in my irrational mind I was scared of him jumping on me or attacking me.  I would tremble whenever I saw him, but I had no reason to.

Danni would throw a tennis ball in the backyard and Snoopy would dart towards it like it was his mission to retrieve the ball.  Sometimes she would pretend to throw it and we would watch Snoopy look endlessly and desperately for the ball, only to come back confused as ever.

Snoopy did jump on me, but it was nowhere near the nightmare I somehow thought it was going to be.  He sniffed me all around my neck and face with his wet nose, and I would just laugh.

One of the cutest moments I remember about Snoopy was when he played catch with himself.  Snoopy  would hit the ball with his head and watch it roll across the yard.  Then he would run over and hit the ball back towards the other side.  He kept himself entertained for the whole evening. As I watched him, I realized that I never had any reason to be scared in the first place.  I realized this was the childhood I always wanted when I was a kid.  Having no allergies, owning a dog, and actually getting to touch and play with him.

Unfortunately, I had to say goodbye to Snoopy.  Danni and I broke up, and I couldn’t see him anymore (I didn’t want to admit to Danni that that was one of the main reasons I was sad).

If there’s anything I took from that experience, it’s that I want to adopt my own dog one day.  Everybody has their own memories of their first time owning a pet, feeding their pet, and giving them baths.  Of course I’ll always cherish the times I had with my fish and turtles, but once I’m out of college (since my current apartment doesn’t allow pets) I want to make more memories with my very own puppy and I can’t wait until the day I get to adopt!