She picked me… and that’s the truth.

When I decided to get a dog and had my heart set on getting a Boston Terrier, I started first looking into Bostie adoption services. But unfortunately there was a waiting list of at least a year and most of the dogs they were adopting out had serious health issues. I couldn’t afford a purebred so I started looking online on sites like kijiji and petfinder. The amount of posts advertising puppies available from “breeders” gave me the creeps and I became highly suspicious of puppy mills being behind them.

And then an ad caught my eye. I don’t even remember why, but I read it and it simply explained that they were a family who had three boston puppies to sell, two male and one female, but they weren’t breeders so the pups didn’t come with papers. They were selling them for $500 each. The reason I paused was because of the one thing they wrote in all caps: **IF INTERESTED WE MUST MEET YOU IN PERSON AND SEE YOU INTERACT WITH THE PUPPY BEFORE WE WILL LET IT GO HOME WITH YOU**. That made me feel better about the situation, so I called. They grilled me on the phone asking if I have had a dog before, if I live near a park, whether I’m active and like to be outside… this was a good sign.

I had my heart set on one of the males. I even had a name picked out, Helo, after one of my favourite characters from Battlestar Galactica. When I got there the family explained that they already had Maggie and then got Buster, so they made arrangements to get them both fixed. Buster got snipped but when it was Maggie’s turn the vet said “ummm, you’re too late she’s pregnant”. We chatted for a bit in their backyard and they let Maggie meet me first so that she wouldn’t be overly anxious when the puppies came out.

Then they opened up the door and three chubby tiny puppies came rolling out. The two boys started snuffling around but the girl immediately came running up to me, climbed into my lap and stuck her tongue in my mouth. She was adorable, impossibly wriggly and had the cutest fat belly… but I still wanted a male dog so I set her down and went over to the other two pups who were wrestling in the grass. She just sat there where I left her and stared at me playing with her brothers, then got up stumbled over to where we were sitting and smacked her two brothers down. She then turned to me and again tried climbing in my lap.

I burst out laughing and said “ok, ok… that’s my dog.”

I named her Helo anyway, even though she’s a girl.