The Partidas – Let’s Make A Trade

May 27, 2014

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Happy Tuesday, everyone! Today’s story is from the Partitas who reside in California! I actually had the pleasure of meeting Melissa and her rescue dog, Olivia, randomly at a dog park one day and will be joining us in the Priceless Pets Pittie Crew Pack Walk on June 7^th! Here is their story about how they rescued their 2 pitties! The Partidas are excellent bully advocates and I am happy to know them!! Thank you for sharing with us!!

We got Olivia in January of this year and she was our first dog ever. Even as kids, neither my husband, Alex, nor I ever had dogs. Our kids desperately wanted a dog despite the fact we have two cats, three chickens and two snakes. And at 7 and 10, we finally decided they could handle a little more responsibility.

After watching the documentary, Earthlings, among other things, I decided I would only rescue pets from here out.  I had a conversation with someone close to me about puppy mills and how awful they were and this person decided to get a dog from a pet store anyway a few months later. It made me angry and broke my heart. But I realized that while I had adopted a cat from a rescue, I couldn’t really be an advocate for rescuing a dog if I hadn’t rescued one. A coworker of mine had recently adopted a pit bull and talked about what a wonderful dog she was. The thought of getting a rescue pit bull scared me at first because of the negative stereotype they have but after doing my research, I was confident they could be trained just like any other dog.

We starting looking on Pet Finder and the family fell in love with Olivia who was at the San Gabriel Valley Humane Society. We went to see her and knew with her playful, spunky attitude; she was the dog for us! A few months later, we decided she needed a friend so we visited the Rancho Cucamonga animal shelter and found Swagger who is calm and perfect for our hyper-active Olivia and balances her out.

My mom told me when I told her I was going to adopt a pit bull that she would never come to my house again. That my insurance wouldn’t cover pit bulls, that my dogs would bite someone and I would lose my house.  After she decided to finally give Olivia a chance and meet her, she cried, apologized and said she was the best behaved dog in the family.  She loves Swagger too.  Based on her recent Facebook posts advocating for pit bulls, I think you could now call her a bully advocate:)

We have had our good days with training and bad days but they are definitely continuing to trust us more and we are trusting them more the longer they are with us. We are learning to read them so we can meet their needs and they always seem to sense when we need them.  Olivia follows the boys everywhere and is their protector. And Swagger enjoys anything mellow (except when he is sprinting on our daily bike rides).

We love our doggies and are so happy we were able to give them a second chance! Hopefully the days of discriminating against specific breeds of dogs will be history soon! Thank you for all of the work you do for such a great breed of dogs:)

-Melissa

P.s. The person close to me who got the pet store dog has sincerely asked if I would trade Olivia for their dog. I think they will be rescuing their next dog 🙂

*If a bully or rescue dog has changed your life, we would love to feature you! Please send photos and story to john@ipittythebull.com