New Harrison Dog Park Opens With a 'Happy Tale'

It was on May 21, that the start of a new life for a little one-year-old Cocker Spanial puppy named Mary Lou would begin. 

The new Harrison Dog Park was a great idea from the start, so I promised Joey Acocella, town clerk, that my husband and I would be there with our Sadie to be part of  the wonderful grand opening celebration last week. We had adopted Sadie in Feb 2009 from the New Rochelle Humane Society at age seven months and felt this would also be a good promotion for NRHS and show proof of some of their charitable work.

The NRHS came to join the dog park's opening celebration and to distribute literature about animal safety, animal adoption and ways of preventing animal cruelty. They also decided to bring a cute little puppy who had been recently abandoned at the shelter with an untreated eye condition, Red Eye, that is common with this breed. The NRHS provided the surgery needed to treat this dog, named Mary Lou, and to seek a loving family she could call her own.

It was beautiful! Large dogs had their huge area to play and run and the smaller dogs (our Sadie) had a separate area to play and run around.  This is when we first spotted Mary Lou, she had a little vest on that said "Adopt Me", so sweet and so gentle she was.  Sadie even went and played with her without too much aggression, a good sign to me!

I played with this little, cheerful puppy for most of the time we were at the park. She was so full of life and my heart broke when I looked at her poor swollen red eye still healing from her resent surgery. 

It was at that point that I looked at my husband Pat and begged him to please let us adopt her and bring her home, but his answer was the appropriate one, Ada, "I'd love to take her also but we have five pets in our home, one dog and four house cats."

I was really upset, but knew he was acting level-headed, which I never am in times like these.  Unfortunately, I think with my heart and inner feelings instead of my brain when it comes to animals, I even have three stray cats in my backyard that I have been feeding for more than six years. I can't help myself, I am an animal lover and I will never change (except for snakes, yuck)

We left the park and Mary Lou that day and we never talked about it afterwords. We had several busy functions to attend and then we were going on a vacation to New Hampshire with the children, so Mary Lou be became nothing more than a sweet memory for us.

A week later, May 29th, the Sunday of Memorial weekend my husband said that we should bring our dog Sadie back to the dog park to run around for a while.  I was a little reluctant as clothes needed washing and I had a million other things to finish before we  left, but I said ok, let's go.

Sadie hopped in the car and off we went to the dog park! As we approached the gates that allow you in, we both noticed only one other puppy in the small section, it was Mary Lou with the same volunteers from the NRHS. It was at this point I knew that Mary Lou was meant to become part of our family!  She and Sadie ran around and played, I once again started begging my husband, saying this was a sign from above to us from God that we adopt this sweet little girl.  He stood his ground and said no, we can't Ada and that's final. 

So to make this long story a bit shorter (and a word of advice to all those husbands who tell their wives that something is "final", it's the worst thing you can say) Mary Lou is now "Lady Mia" Angarano and came home to live with us on June 6 when we returned from our trip.

We were blessed by God once again and we were able to save another animal from the possibility of a doomed ending. Lady Mia is now a happy tale.

Please adopt from your local animal shelters, there are hundreds of unwanted, unloved beautiful pets out there just waiting for another loving family to take them "home sweet home".

-Ada Angarano, animal lover (: