Dear Judy,

Happy holidays! We are writing with an update about Maisie (formerly Jenny) who we adopted in July. She is the best dog! She settled into the family very easily, and she enjoys spending the days with Peter, who mostly works from home. She’s lost almost 20 pounds since we got her and now that she’s slimmer, she really enjoys racing around the dog park and has learned to retrieve. She finished her first round of training at the SPCA, and I’m hoping she will become a therapy dog in 2018. I’ve taken her to visit at the hospital where I work and she’s been a huge hit with the patients and the staff. My son’s friends come by just to see Maisie, and she’s so calming that we call it “watching the Maisie channel.”

I wanted to give a big plug for the many good things about  adopting an older (and chubbier) dog. What you see is what you get – when you said that she didn’t have any bad habits and was really well-behaved, you were so right!  Helping her lose weight has been good for us as well since we want to help her stay slim. And it’s so odd to say this about a lab, but we can actually leave food on the counter and it stays there – and this is a first for us!

Please thank her wonderful foster family for us, and huge thanks to you for the wonderful work that you do. We can’t imagine life without her.

All the best, Anne and Peter