Entrant's First Name
Molly

Entrant's Location (city, state, country)
Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Name of organization the pet(s) is available through, or was adopted from [optional]
Second Chance For Animals

Pet's Bio or Adoption Story
The rescue story of Aries is a special one because I didn't just rescue him, he rescued me as well.

I had just lost my sweet rescue dog Jordy who I had for 14 years and was a huge part of my childhood and adult life. It was very sudden and I was not handling it well at all.

I am passionate about helping animals in need and helping to get dogs rescued, so I was part of an email list for rescue dogs in need of homes and you usually get one email a day with a handful of dogs listed in the email. I wasn't really looking at them as I was still really down, but one day about two weeks after losing Jordy, I randomly received multiple emails from the site all at once, so I clicked them and instead of a list of dogs, in each email there was just one dog, and his name was Aries.

He had this look on his face that jarred me because it put me in the mind of my Jordy so much. I thought it was interesting that his name was Aries too because I am an Aries so I took it all as a sign that I needed to help him, as he was listed as an urgent case.

My husband and I drove out to go meet him and all of the sudden, I was driving home with Aries in my lap, not really knowing what I was doing. I was a nervous wreck because I was still very much in the grieving process from Jordy and Aries was equally as nervous coming from a rough situation himself. He had a lot of nervous and destructive habits that required a lot of attention. I started immediately helping him to work through them, and little did I know, he was helping me to get out of my funk, and work through my grief over Jordy.

Two weeks (that were filled with lots of ups and downs) later we took him to a dog park on Easter, I was terrified to let him off leash because the park was massive and I didn't know if he would come to me if I called to him, because maybe he didn't consider me his family yet, but I finally took the leash off with my husbands encouragement and in a flash, he bolted away from me. My heart sunk as I saw him become a little dot chasing after the other dogs thinking it would be impossible to catch up to him. After a few laps though, suddenly Aries was right by my side again, looking up at me with this look that said, "hi mom! Boy, this is great!" He took off a few moments later, but every time after a few laps he would come right back to me and sit down next to me. I started crying realizing that he knew I was his mom, and that this was his family and he was safe and at home.

Aries is the best dog anyone could ever ask for. We have worked very hard together and he has earned his Canine Good Citizen certificate and will be training to be a therapy dog very soon where we hope to visit hospitals and bring joy to those who need it!