{"id":249,"date":"2015-11-03T09:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T17:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/?p=249"},"modified":"2018-08-14T22:22:34","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T05:22:34","slug":"writer-feature-why-i-want-to-adopt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/adopt-dont-shop\/writer-feature-why-i-want-to-adopt\/","title":{"rendered":"Writer Feature: Why I Want to Adopt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: Please welcome to our writer roster, Chris\u00a0Ventura! 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\u00a0to have him\u00a0on board!<\/em><\/p>\n

Imagine this: you\u2019re 7 years old. You go to your best friend\u2019s house and he shows you the tiniest puppy you\u2019ve ever seen in your life.\u00a0 All you want is to adopt your own puppy to squeeze and play with!\u00a0 There\u2019s just one tiny problem . . .<\/p>\n

Your eyes get watery and red, and you sneeze every time you get anywhere near a dog.\u00a0 That\u2019s the childhood I had.\u00a0 No cats.\u00a0 No dogs.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"Chris_fishtank\"<\/a>

With my fish tank<\/p><\/div>\n

That\u2019s not to say I had a bad childhood.\u00a0 Some of my fondest memories were with my fish and turtles.\u00a0 I remember dropping fish food into the bowl with a little shaker (I also remember tasting the fish food, but that\u2019s not something I recommend).\u00a0 The flakes would float to the bottom of the bowl and the little beta would eye them for about a millisecond before snapping away.<\/p>\n

I remember coming home from school and finding an empty plastic tub where the turtles were supposed to be.\u00a0 After half-an-hour of crying, my dad found them hiding in my mom\u2019s garden.<\/p>\n

So that was my pet experience in grade school: eating fish food and playing hide-and-seek with my turtles.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 That was until one Shih Tzu changed everything.\u00a0 His name was Snoopy and he belonged to my then-girlfriend, Danni.<\/p>\n

\"Snoopy\"<\/a>

The adorable Snoopy<\/p><\/div>\n

Snoopy had white fur and looked like a mop without the stick.\u00a0 The little guy couldn\u2019t hurt a fly, but in my irrational mind I was scared of him jumping on me or attacking me.\u00a0 I would tremble whenever I saw him, but I had no reason to.<\/p>\n

Danni would throw a tennis ball in the backyard and Snoopy would dart towards it like it was his mission to retrieve the ball.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Snoopy did jump on me, but it was nowhere near the nightmare I somehow thought it was going to be.\u00a0 He sniffed me all around my neck and face with his wet nose, and I would just laugh.<\/p>\n

One of the cutest moments I remember about Snoopy was when he played catch with himself.\u00a0 Snoopy \u00a0would hit the ball with his head and watch it roll across the yard.\u00a0 Then he would run over and hit the ball back towards the other side.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I realized this was the childhood I always wanted when I was a kid.\u00a0 Having no allergies, owning a dog, and actually getting to touch and play with him.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I had to say goodbye to Snoopy.\u00a0 Danni and I broke up, and I couldn\u2019t see him anymore (I didn\u2019t want to admit to Danni that that was one of the main reasons I was sad).<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s anything I took from that experience, it\u2019s that I want to adopt my own dog one day.\u00a0 Everybody has their own memories of their first time owning a pet, feeding their pet, and giving them baths.\u00a0 Of course I\u2019ll always cherish the times I had with my fish and turtles, but once I\u2019m out of college (since my current apartment doesn\u2019t allow pets) I want to make more memories with my very own puppy and I can\u2019t wait until the day I get to adopt!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: Please welcome to our writer roster, Chris\u00a0Ventura! 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\u00a0to have him\u00a0on board! Imagine this: you\u2019re 7 years old. You go to your best friend\u2019s house and he shows you the tiniest puppy you\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[11,14,18,21,74,73],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4713,"href":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/4713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sittingforacause.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}