Revision

I chose my Personal Narrative to revise and fix up. I focused on the comments and things I was missing in the original. Going back and viewing I realized that I made a lot of comma mistake and will try to focus on those in the future.

My First Foster Dog

On Christmas Day 2014, my family and I came home from celebrating Christmas at my grandparents’ house, and we decided to take our dog out to the dog park. For some reason, we thought other people were going to be there. We got our dogs Yoshi, a small tan and white maltipoo with a tan face on his back and KC is an older, black lab, and got them into the back of my dad’s car.  Then they started to bark uncontrollably at something, which they never do in the car. Then my mom yells over the dogs’ loud barking that there is a stray dog behind the car. I get out to see if I could help the dog; whenever I see a stray dog, I always try to get it and help it find its way home. The dog was a female boxer, greyhound mix, and I went up to the dog she sat and let me pet her. She was skinny; you could see her ribs and her backbone. It hurts me when I see a dog that is skinny because I think about what they might had been through; she could have been wondering the streets for a long time or she just wasn’t fed well.

Then I asked my parents if we could help her, and my parents said not right now because we were about to go to the dog park. I argued with them about helping her. They said if she was still there when we got back from the park we could help her.

I told her “stay nearby so I can help you find your home,” which is very odd to tell to a stray dog I just met. We went to the dog park, and I was so mad and upset that I was just sitting in silence in the car staring out the wind, and I hated how we left her there and was not able to help her. At the dog park, there was no one there; our dogs were just walking around, so we headed home and I was hoping that was the dog was still there. We got home and I jumped out of the car and went running down the driveway, already yelling before I made it to the street. I made it almost to the end of the street when I heard my parents yelling for me to come back and I just kept running and shouting. Suddenly as I was yelling the dog came speeding around the corner towards me; I was so happy I ran into my neighbor’s yard just to get her. When I to her and she just sat again and I just petted her in happiness. Luckily I had a leash with me; we walked home, and I was so excited to help her and find her home.

Later that day we decided on a name for her, Lulu, I thought it was a perfect name for her. We introduced her to our dogs by taking them on a walk because if they met at our house, there would be dominance or territorial factor shown from Yoshi or KC. We started to try to find out who she belonged to by taking photos of her and putting them on the lost pets website for Baton Rouge and our neighborhood app. We didn't get any responses from either one of those, so we took those photos and a put them into a word document with my parents' information and printed it out. We hung up the signs all over our neighborhood and we got some call from people trying to get a free dog. There was one man who called and claimed Lulu was his dog, so my parents asked him what her name was and he said No-no. We thought it was strange, but we tried calling her by that name and she didn't respond and we told the guy that she is not his dog and hung up. It is crazy that someone would call us to try to get a dog and why someone would do that.

No one had claimed Lulu, so we decided to put her up for adoption. We went to pet stores on a Saturday trying to find an organization where someone could foster her. Then we finally went to a place called Friends of the Animals (FOTA) where they have their own adoption house with a yard and an area for people to interact with the dogs and get to know them. We tried to see if someone already there could foster her but no one could, so then we had to decide if we wanted to foster her. My parents decide that we were going to foster her through FOTA.

We had her for a couple of weeks before she got adopted. In those weeks Lulu realized she could climb the fence, so every day she would climb out when we were gone and then climb back in.  We took her over to my friend’s house who lives around the corner from us and they has a dog, Murphy, that she could play with a dog her size and her age. We introduced the Lulu to Murphy and then let them play in the backyard for a long time. My friend, Lindy, had two dogs but one of the dogs was very one and the other one, Murphy, was young and they had the same situation with an older and younger dog. A few days later Lulu climbed the fence and goes to their house and Lindy found her and with her sister Maggie, and their babysitter they walked her back over and put her in the fence, but when they were walking to the front of our house, she was already in the front yard. Then they decided to take her to their house until it got closer to when my parents and I got home. Later they walked around to see if she was still in the yard, and by that time we were home, they told us what had happened.

The more we had her I got attached to her and she would lay inside Yoshi’s kennel which was half her size. She would lay on the couch next to you at night. During the day, she was hyper but at night she was calm and quiet. When she got adopted, I cried wasn’t ready to let her go because I didn't want her to leave at all of one and I didn't know who she was going to. Later, it ended up that the man who adopted her works for my mom, and every now and then we get an update on how she is doing, but I haven't seen her; since I just wish I could see her again. Helping Lulu made me think about that there are dogs out in the world that are getting abused and abandoned every day and it made me want to try to do more for a dog that doesn’t have a quality home or life.