This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant

 (PLEASE RE-POST TO FB, STUMBLE UPON AND ALSO TWEET ANY OF MY ARTICLES THAT YOU LIKE.  THANKS!)

Vulnerability of Prospective and New Adoptive Parents.

  ..My Surprising Refresher Course During My Search For A New Scottie Dog

I don’t know about you, but I believe that everything we go through teaches us some type of lesson.  I was recently reminded of this in a big way. If you are an adoptive parent or prospective parent, before you read on, please don’t get offended at the early focus in this article on our search for a new Scottish Terrier. I love Scotties but am a lifelong child adoption advocate too, and I am going somewhere with this. Are you willing to indulge me a bit and to read on?  I hope so!

     Some of you know that our dear Scottish Terrier, Danny, died in January of this year.  Our initial reaction was, of course, that no other dog would ever find a way into our hearts again and that we were done with pets.  We missed him so much, though, that it didn’t take long before I registered on Pet Finders, hoping that some other furry creature would capture my emotions.  My husband wasn’t quite at the same place, which was fine, but when he began to spend a good part of his days off from work looking at Scottie videos on You Tube, I knew the time had come to begin our search in earnest. We thought about a Rescue pet, but worried about how one with a difficult history would adapt to our toddler granddaughter who visits frequently.  It seemed natural that I, an adoption professional for many decades and a seasoned adoptive mother, would be drawn to dogs who really needed a loving home, so we planned on attending a large Pet Expo held in Hartford and cleared our calendar for that day, eagerly looking forward to it and hoping we might find just the right dog for our family.  Fate intervened and my husband was ill with a stomach bug that day.  We never made it there.

     I found myself perusing every Scottish Terrier website I could find and we both admitted that we were pretty much hooked on Scotties. As much as we like and appreciate other breeds, after having owned two Scotties, no other would do for us, we felt.  My husband was quickly on board, so I pulled my 14 plus year old file (You didn’t know I was THAT organized, did you?  Neither did I!). I found detailed information about the trail I had followed before we got our Danny Boy.  I began calling and e-mailing Rescue Coordinators and was told that there were not often older Scotties available.  I was told that the ones that come up from time to time usually have difficult histories and might not be suitable for a home with a very young child or grandchild.  In fact, some felt strongly that Scotties never did well with young kids. Since that had not been our experience, having raised kids and Scotties together, I did not concur and some breeders to whom I spoke also disagreed and said that it depended on how a dog was socialized and taught as a puppy. That made sense.  I had never had a puppy, though, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to undertake all the work and many weeks or months of sleepless nights that a young pup would require.

        I began to scour the earth (It felt like I was reaching that far) for just the right slightly older dog. A few long time friends remarked that they remembered me with this fervor when I was looking for another child to adopt.  I left no stone unturned.   We got a call about an available dog, but unfortunately the call came the same day I returned from a dentist appointment, having learned that I had another large financial undertaking in store.  We declined this offer after thinking it through logically and tried to try to settle into being Scottieless for a while.  Well that didn’t last long, as we kept on looking at Scottie videos, websites, and of course, being true devotees of the breed, our home is filled with Scottie accessories and trinkets. Scotties are in our line of vision pretty much all the time.  When I wasn’t working, I would find myself back at the Scottie Search.   Friends kept sending me photos of other dogs needing homes but it just didn’t feel right.

     Once again, we revisited the question of a puppy versus a slightly older dog and decided that we could handle a puppy after all and that in spite of other imminent expenses, our quality of life wasn’t the same without a spunky little independent “diehard” of a dog.  The search was resumed and I spoke to what seemed like a multitude of people. Some of the breeders whose names I had on my old list were retired but gave me leads and names of people they recommended. Others were not planning to breed for quite a while, and still others knew of puppies that were expected.  One name came up several times and I was referred to a woman who had gotten a puppy from this breeder, in another part of the country. She got rave reviews.  I was apprehensive about having such a young puppy travel by air or by ground, but spoke with people who had done this and said all had turned out well. I spoke at length with this distant breeder who quizzed me about our home, our family constellation, our work, our work schedules, our general finances, our lifestyle, and who sternly informed me of a multitude of policies which we were expected to honor.  Several others sent extensive applications and wanted photos of us, our home, yard and family.  I quickly began to feel like we were undergoing an adoption homestudy and compiling a dossier to be scrutinized by government officials. I am normally an open book, but some of the buried, very old feelings I remembered from my days as a prospective adoptive parent began to surface.  I identified myself beginning to feel “exposed”, “ defenseless”, “not up to par” and resentful because I knew we were a great family and few could love Scotties the way we did.  We decided we would ask for a puppy from one out of state breeder, because we weren’t at that point finding any nearby.  We had a few pleasant phone conversations and exchanged some friendly e-mails. We were told that since we wanted a male and most of her waiting list wanted females (Those of you involved in child adoption work will recognize this similarity) we would almost definitely get a puppy before long because she had a couple of pregnant females. 

     Just like most prospective adoptive parents, we were starry-eyed and excited and started to peruse pet product catalogues and to browse in pet stores.  I imagined the best places in our house to keep our new puppy, and thought about redoing the computer/work corner in our living room and putting a dog pen,  crate and toys in that space, moving the work area elsewhere. I set to work creating a storybook about a new puppy for my youngest granddaughter.  I began to notice puppies everywhere and went out and purchased several interesting books on raising and training puppies. (Does this sound familiar, all of you adoptive parents out there who are waiting for a child?)  As the weeks passed, I made a list of questions to ask the breeder as things occurred to me. She seemed so knowledgeable and approachable, so imagine my shock and surprise when I subsequently received a communication that was quite cold.  She indicated she had suddenly reviewed her waiting list and had many, many more on the list than she had realized. She said we would not be getting a puppy for a long time.  She suggested rather strongly that we look elsewhere and then resisted my attempts to open up communications and ask what the problem was.  My heart sank and I ran into the other room to inform my husband, whose face quickly revealed his own shock and hurt. We checked online and saw that she was still advertising that she had puppies available.  Apparently we had asked “too many questions” though we had been told that it was perfectly fine to do so.  We had also expressed an interest in maybe taking a dog for obedience training and, IF the dog had the right temperament, we were interested in looking at further training as a therapy dog, for senior citizens or ill people.  I did not say that was a requirement or that we had to have a dog capable of this, but only that it was something a good friend had gotten me interested in. 

     This sudden and unexpected turnabout took me back about 40 years, reminding me of a rapid attitudinal change in our first adoption social worker, who was initially delighted with our family and was our staunch ally during the homestudy process, until we told her I was interested in re-lactating and breastfeeding our adopted daughter-to-be.

     While we had been told earlier by our worker that our wait would most likely be short, delay after delay suddenly cropped up.  Years later, when we had proven ourselves as adoptive parents more than once, the social worker revealed to us that my desire to breastfeed our adopted baby had “alarmed her”. She reported that she had chosen to deliberately slow the process a bit so that the child who had been potentially  matched with us would probably be too old to accept the breast after having been bottle fed.   I was shocked at this admission so many years later, but was happy to tell her that the re-lactation was successful and that our daughter had nursed well for a while in spite of the workers bias and delays.

     I know that reputable dog breeders care about the well-being of their dogs and also about betterment of the breed, so I accept that there should be some questions and a certain amount of screening.  What was hard to accept was the closed-mindedness and rigidity I seemed to encounter, with a few happy exceptions.  Some breeders were very friendly and helpful, but others made value judgments and seemed to believe that there was only one type of “ideal family”.  Having worked as an adoption professional for so many decades, if I have learned anything, it is that it takes all kinds to make the world revolve and there are no perfect homes and no perfect families. In fact, I had a sign to that effect on one of the walls in my office at the adoption agency, to make sure I never forgot that fact.  To this day, I also still encounter adoption social workers who speak these words, yet make plenty of pre-judgments about what constitutes a good family.   In my Scottie search I heard too many times how Scotties must have a lot of exercise and absolutely need a fenced-in yard.  While this might indeed be the most perfect situation, I remember when we got our very first Scottie dog nearly 40 years ago, we had read in dog books that Scotties were then considered very suited to apartment living.  It was thought that they could get exercise taking long walks and were content to race around the house playing ball or with other toys.  We owned a home at the time, as we do still, but we never did have a fenced yard and our two previous Scotties were well loved, loving, happy and lived long lives.

     There is a happy ending to our family’s recent story. While at first there seemed to be no potential Scotties, we suddenly found ourselves with several to choose from. It began to rain Scottie possibilities.  A very lovely and reputable breeder had puppies to be ready in mid-July.  Another truly helpful person had a new litter to be ready around the same time.  I located a gracious and intelligent woman in a nearby state whose dogs were soon to be bred and she said she would stay in contact.  Finally, we learned of a very young female Scottie who seemed to have a good temperament and who had won some puppy trial prizes, but who wasn’t turning out to be as good of a show dog as her sister.  We felt torn because by this time we had sold ourselves on the benefits of a having a puppy, but we weighed all of our options carefully.  Since we were involved in a time-consuming and emotional relocation of my husband’s mother to a dementia care facility near our home, we decided that a new puppy with housebreaking needs and likely to disturb our sleep at night for at least a couple of months was probably too much of an undertaking for us at the time.  We went to meet our little Emily at the end of June and the rest is history. She is quickly becoming a delightful and integral part of our family. We expect that my mother-in-law will love her as much as my toddler granddaughter already does. These two are best buddies and follow each other around everywhere.  No, we still don’t have a fenced yard, but once we get my mother-in-law properly settled in, we are planning to build a fenced play area for Emily and for us too.

     During my 29 years of directing an adoption agency, I have witnessed the unification of countless prospective parents with babies and children needing permanent homes.  For the most part our agency was blessed with a wonderful group of families.  Still we were obligated by law and by ethics to assess the families carefully and there was and is an extensive vetting process for prospective adoptive parents in the State of Connecticut and in most other states in the U.S.  This is as it should be. Adoption professionals are, nonetheless, in a strange position of holding power over people’s lives. It is so important for them to be sensitive and understanding of how the majority of prospective parents and brand-new parents are feeling.    Most professionals want the very best for the children they will be placing, or whose adoptions they will be facilitating.  Many genuinely care about the families with whom they work and want to do their jobs well, with the most positive outcomes possible.  There are some who get caught up in the trap of abusing their power and control, but thankfully these people are in the minority.  I think what happens most often is that workers either don’t understand or just plain forget how vulnerable and frightened most prospective or new adoptive parents really are. 

     I am a seasoned adoptive parent of adults and have a long history of working with adoptive families and a reputation in this field for being sensitive, caring and open. In spite of this,  the recent search for a Scottie awakened a lot of the old feelings and memories for me.   Among clients in my coaching practice, are also some adoptive parents and waiting parents.  I do a lot of listening without making judgments, as coaches are supposed to and help clients plan for what they want  to do and to achieve their own goals, without imposing my own needs or values on them.  I have personally been through multiple adoption and foster homestudies in the past and know how it feels to have every aspect of your life and your inner thoughts bared for the world to see before you are approved and deemed worthy of adopting a child.  While there is more to the homestudy process than just the investigation layer, and a good adoption service provider focuses on education and preparing parents to do the best job they can once they have a child or children places with them, it is so important to be client-centered during this process.  Many agencies believe the client is only the child or children, but I have always believed that we could not help to build happy, well-functioning families without caring about the needs of all concerned.

     That is the story of how my Scottie search reawakened and sharpened my sensitivity and awareness to the needs and feelings of those going through the child adoption homestudy, or those who have just had children placed with them and who want their agency’s help but are frightened about saying or doing something that could jeopardize their standing with the agency.  While I don’t think I ever really lost that understanding, now I simply remember it more clearly.  I believe this is a useful lesson for me, and one that other adoption professionals should review in a “refresher course” from time to time in order to best serve their client population.