I grew up around dogs, I've loved them my whole life. We may have said four children is enough, and we've decided to stop growing our family… but we never said our family wouldn't grow in other ways!

We've been considering adding to the chaos of our home for a while, and we've finally done it! We've already got our old girl Pebbles, a beautiful tortoiseshell cat who we adopted when Squidgy was a toddler and is around 12 / 13 years old… now we have a 10 week old puppy to love too.

Deciding to adopt

Adopting and buying from reputable breeders each have their place… but for us, adopting puppies from a lovely local charity has been something we'd spoken about for a long time, and when the Toy Story pups came up for adoption, it just felt right.

The adoption process

To adopt an animal from Oak Tree Animals Charity there are several steps involved:

Check online to see the dogs, cats, and even horses that are available for adoption.
See which of the available animals matches your home, family, and lifestyle.
Complete the questionnaire. This includes information about your home and living situation, plans for unexpected events such as illness, photos of your home and outdoor spaces, and more.
The team at Oak Tree aim to review all completed enquiries within 72 hours.
If the animal you're interested in has specific needs, the team may wish to speak with you further or do a home visit.
If you are successful in your application (as we were) you will be invited to visit with the animal in one of the spaces on site such as the family room where we met Jessie to ensure that you are the right fit.
If it is agreed that you will move forward with the adoption, you completed the relevant paperwork and pay the adoption fee (£275 for dogs and £155 for cats).
Now it's time to take your new furbaby home and start your new life and adventures together.

N.B. In some cases Oak Tree may offer a ‘foster-to-adopt’ option to ensure that your home is the right fit for the animal are interested in adopting. This option is available in exceptional circumstances such as where an animal has specialist requirements.

Bringing Jessie home

After a successful visit with Jessie and the children and a video call with John who had to work on the day, we agreed to adopt Jessie. I signed the paperwork, paid the fee, wrapped our new little baby in her blanket, popped her in the car with Pickle and started the journey home with nothing but a bag with enough food for a couple of days, her vaccination record, and a huge smile on everyone's faces.

If I'm honest, I didn't realise how quick the process was. We had nothing ready. We thought we'd have time to plan, but instead we had a new puppy heading home and nothing but the conversations we'd had about what we'd need if we adopted her.

Picking out the must haves

The speed with which the adoption happened meant we had a lot to do in a very short space of time. With nothing but a Pinterest board, a “we probably need this” list, a bundle of very excited children, and a little pup who needed carrying everywhere we made our way to Pets at Home and the Range to make sure we had everything we needed. What we couldn't get immediately (such as the Burns puppy food they'd fed the litter at Oak Tree) we ordered online.

Check out my Puppy Must Haves here on my blog.

Settling in

Jessie has settled in really well and is a fabulous addition to our home. She is super quiet, loves a snuggle, and has everyone in the house wrapped around her paw. She sleeps in her crate at night and is mostly using the garden for her toilet training. We're all super excited for when she'll have her vaccinations and be able to start going for walks with us.

Training

We decided to go for clicker training as our method of choice. We are working on a few basics including recognising her name, “sit”, and “wait”. So far, so good… she's an extremely good student so hopefully in time we'll be able to move on to other commands.

I'm so glad we made the choice to adopt wee Jessie, and I can't wait to share with you all the adventures we go on as a family of 7!

For more blog posts on pets from must haves to going on pet friendly adventures, check out my pets category here. Have you got ideas of house and pet you'd like to see? Feel free to share your ideas in the comments below.

Big News: We Adopted a Puppy!