The welfare of our four-legged friends has long been a passion of mine, and the rescue/adoption of otherwise neglected animals is no exception. With this in mind, in 2014 I answered a call put out by Paws in the City, a local NPO focused on facilitating the perfect bond between animal and human without resorting to loss-of-life measures. With the organization seeking volunteer pet profile writers to help draw interest from prospective adopters, and having adopted my own good boy partially thanks to such a profile (see exhibit A below), I understood the importance of making a good first impression to us loving, at-times naive homo sapiens.

Every animal is different, requiring a delicate pen to both highlight their best attributes while being forthright in the specific TLC that any given pet might need in an owner. For every crate-trained canine that’s great with children, there’s a more skittish, solitary pup that can also make an excellent companion, provided their human understands and puts in the effort to reach that point. I feel like I do my best work writing profiles for the latter category, and I’d like to think that the relationships gained from adopting such animals become all the more rewarding because of it.