Our Rescue Story
How Benji the Rescue Found His Furever Home - and How I Got Lucky Enough To Be His Mom
At DogMa, we really love promoting rescues, sharing dogs looking for their furever home, and posting your rescue stories. We thought it was about time we shared our rescue story with you.
We all remember March 2020. It was a scary time. Everything shut down, and it was truly an unprecedented event in our lifetimes. I was 2 months shy of graduating from grad school and looking forward to getting married that summer. Suddenly, everything was so up in the air - and to top it off we were about 1,700 miles from all of our friends and family.
My fiancé (now husband), and I were a few weeks into our final internships in Arizona when the pandemic hit. It had been a huge trip and adventure to go out there, as we are primarily located in the Midwest. Having prepared for this capstone event for 3 years, we were in absolute disbelief to suddenly be locked in an unfamiliar Airbnb across the country from our loved ones.
It didn’t take long before we realized the pandemic would be lasting significantly longer than 2 weeks. With nothing to do but sit inside our small apartment, I spent my hours killing time the way I always do… By scrolling Petfinder. I had half-heartedly suggested multiple dogs to my husband throughout the course of lockdown, always daydreaming that one of them would be ours, but never actually committing. It was rare we would agree on a dog anyways, or even if I did get the courage to submit an application - the dog was usually already adopted.
Benji’s Pet Finder Picture
Until one day, I came across Benji… On a whim, I showed him to my fiancé - and his face lit up. We were in the middle of our regular walk outside, and we stopped what we were doing to fill out the application. Now, this was a time that dogs were being adopted left and right, so when we finally got the application submitted - we didn’t actually expect to hear anything back. I anxiously refreshed my email the rest of the afternoon, as I just felt like something was different about this dog.
Then came the email. “When can you meet Jaeger? You’re first in line.” (Jaeger was Benji’s name before we adopted him). I immediately felt nervous. Were we ready for a dog? Was now the right time? What was going to happen with graduation? Where would we even be in a few months? I told them we would come “see him” the following day. (In my house, going to “see” a dog is as good as committing to take them home. I knew if we went, he’d be coming home with us.)
My fiancé was incredibly reassuring - and honestly excited. I sent around a few pictures to my closest friends to get their thoughts. Everyone was in support of us adopting Benji, as they knew how long we’d wished for a dog. And heck - the world might be ending anyways!
As we drove to the rescue - my fiancé did his best to keep my head level. He reminded me of all the questions we wanted to ask, the criteria we were looking for, etc. The drive was about 40 minutes, and as we got closer and closer - I could feel my heart absolutely pounding in my chest.
We arrived to the rescue and chatted with one of the aids for a few minutes. We had prepared for a brief interview, and I was nervous we had come this far only to be turned down. To my surprise, the “interview” was barely more than brief small talk with basically no follow up questions.
Finally, Benji was brought to us. His ears were cut up, he was covered in dust, and quite honestly - smelled pretty bad. He was severely underweight, nervous and overall in bad shape. Benji slowly crept out from behind the owner of the rescue as she introduced him to us. I knelt down to his level and held my hand out to see if he wanted to approach. He immediately came up to me and put his head right into my chest. I had no questions to ask - this dog was mine.
My fiancé, obviously being the more practical of the two of us, managed to ask a few key questions. And as luck would have it, we heard all the right answers. He was extremely friendly, he liked people, he was easy going. (Basically, perfect in my opinion!) To be honest, I wasn’t really paying attention. I was too wrapped up in the excitement of finally being a dog mom.
And with that… we took him home. The next few months would be a bit rocky for our little family. As we quickly found out that Benji had a multitude of viruses and parasites. Thankfully, nothing life threatening, but it definitely took us several months and many vet visits to get him back to full health. For my fiancé and I, we faced canceled graduations, a rescheduled wedding, and uncertainty in our careers. There is no doubt that Benji has been the light through it all. I’d give up a million graduations and a thousand weddings to be his DogMa. As the saying goes, “Who rescued who?”
Benji is no doubt the inspiration behind DogMa… But you might be wondering? "What's A DogMa?" Read more here!
