1. A Dream, A Dog & A Facebook Post
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The dog at first was Target’s mom, who quietly gave birth to him a few towns over, surrounded by love, at the beginning of December. After that, the dog would be Target. Unbeknownst to me, my life changed for the better that day in December and his impact on my life would inspire me forever.
Like most stories worth telling, ours begins with a dream, a dog and a Facebook post. The dream had been mine since I was a little kid, watching the intelligent, speedy and athletic border collies, flying through agility courses on TV. I watched those dogs with an intensity that mirrored their intensity for their sport and I decided, as young as I was, that this was the breed for me. Twenty years later, when the decision was made that a dog would be part of our family, there was no question in my mind that our dog would be a border collie.
The dog at first was Target’s mom, who quietly gave birth to him a few towns over, surrounded by love, at the beginning of December. After that, the dog would be Target. Unbeknownst to me, my life changed for the better that day in December and his impact on my life would inspire me forever.
The Facebook post advertising Target and his siblings appeared in my newsfeed between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
“Purebred border collies for sale!”
They would be ready to go in February around Valentine’s Day. Eight puppies, a multitude of black and whites both male and females, an interestingly coloured merle male, a merle female, and a completely white male with blue eyes and a single black bullseye.
Immediately, contacted the breeder and set up a meeting for the next day. It had been in our plan to wait until March to bring home a dog. It would have worked better for our schedules, given us a chance to find a reputable breeder and be prepared for the new member of our family. You can imagine my boyfriends surprise when he arrived home from work to find that I had unilaterally decided our puppy time was now and that he would be travelling the next day to pick out our puppy. Luckily for me, when you start a conversation off with “we need to talk”, your partner’s instinct is to think “break up” and not “surprise puppy!”
That night we looked at the pictures of the puppy, discussed what we were looking for and put together a tenative game plan.
But, at the end of the day, I only had two rules:
Pick the puppy that most relates to you and seems to “choose you”
Pick a puppy. Just pick one, I would be happy with his choice and pay the deposit when I arrived .
As far as I was concerned, we were getting my dog and that was all that was in my radar. The markings, the colour, the sex, nothing else mattered. As long as the breeder was a good person with integrity, the dogs were healthy and there weren’t any signs of abusive treatment, everything else was just gravy.
With some hesitation, my boyfriend agreed to go the next day and a journey that neither of us could have expected began.
