In February of 2005 we had to put down our little dog Keyla due to cancer. She had been with me for 14 years
(7 with my husband). It was pretty hard, I thought no dog could replace her but after a few weeks I realized it was hard living without a dog. So we started looking, nothing really grabbed us, or if we saw one we liked it was gone by the time we called. One night I was driving to the store thinking about the whole thing of looking for a new dog, I didn't know if I wanted to do it anymore, I didn’t want a new dog I wanted my dog back. I got pretty frustrated and broke down and cried. (So here is where I get sappy…) I asked Keyla just to put her spirit in another dogs body and lead us to find her. The next day we happened by one of HALO’s weekend adoption events, said they just got a new little dog in that we could go see at Joyce’s house – they showed her to us – her name was Spirit. It was love at first site and she has been with us ever since. She is the most wonderful dog, seemed a bit shy around people but bonded with us instantly. That day she went home with us.
I was so impressed with HALO and admired what Joyce was doing so much that I just felt this draw to want to help out. So I became a volunteer with HALO and it has been one of the best experiences of my life.
As time went by we started thinking that Spirit needed a friend so she was not lonely during the day while we worked. Keyla had grown up with my cats and had them for companionship and never really cared for other dogs so we never thought of having 2 dogs. I started keeping an eye out for the dogs that were coming into HALO, waiting for just that right one. In October of 2005 Joyce took in a group of dogs from the Sacramento shelter to make some room in the Shelter for Katrina animals. That is when I saw Sammy (previously named Danny). We decided to take him on a trial basis. He was still pretty young and hyper and Spirit just really did not care for him so after a few days we thought “What the heck were we thinking, he is going to have to go, this isn’t working,” Joyce told me that sometimes you need to be patient and give the dogs time to get use to each other, so we tried longer, and really he was just so dang cute. After two weeks things settle down and Sammy became the newest member of the Boss Household. Watching them play together is one of the best things.
We are both so thankful that we found HALO and HALO found Spirit and Sammy.
--Gigi Boss
