Stacey and Faith
What was Faith like when you first adopted her?
Me and my partner Billy decided to adopt and after passing all the checks the beautiful Faith arrived on Friday 31st January around 6.30pm. She arrived so fatigued from her journey. She drank a load of water and ate a big bowl of food, and then the bounding bundle of joy came to life.
I’m not going to lie, on the first night I thought 'Good God what have we done!' I was the one that collected her from the van and she seemed to attach to me instantly and if I left the room she would howl and scream, resulting in the first two nights me sleeping on the floor next to her in her crate.
What were her first few weeks with you like?
After she began to settle, we weaned her off me so I could return to bed of a night time, and began to socialise her in a really controlled manner, one person at a time etc., with family, friends and other dogs.
We made the decision to introduce to her to lots of different things quite quickly, again in a controlled way. We did walks with neighbours' dogs, car journeys and often sat on the side of the road watching traffic go by.
After 10 days we started puppy classes, and this is where she came on leaps and bounds. The bond between us grew massively and we wouldn’t change her for the world.
What was training Faith like?
We chose to crate train Faith, and toilet training was mastered in 10 days. For a four-month-old puppy who had never been in a house we found this amazing! She has never messed in the house after these initial 10 days.
What is life with her like a year later?
Faith comes everywhere with us - walks, running, meeting friends, pub - you name it she comes. She even goes to work with Billy in the lorry on any days our parents can’t help out with a midday walk.
Although she comes to a lot of places with us, we were also very careful to make sure she was happy to stay at home alone. Again we used the crate to get her used to this for an hour at a time, and now she is more than happy to curl up on sofa whilst we are out, waiting for our return.
We are so pleased we decided to adopt and would definitely go through Barking Mad again if we decide to grow our family.