This date… May 27th… 6 years ago…It was May 27th, 2015 when my life changed for the much better.
I always wanted to have a dog… I was volunteering at an animal shelter in Montreal and was seriously looking to adopt a dog from that shelter. One day, I saw a post from Vafa’s shelter on my Facebook (probably a friend had shared it). I had not heard about Vafa until that day. I checked their website and I was impressed that such a shelter exists in Iran. When I learnt about Vafa, I decided to adopt a dog from there and not from Montreal… I checked Vafa’s website for the available dogs. There were several dogs listed, I scrolled down and down looking just at their photos until I saw Nassim’s photo…Boom! I could not scroll any further. That was it, the innocence and shyness in her eyes captivated me. I immediately wrote an email to Vafa’s foreign adoption person in charge at the time Ms. Farah Ravon and asked if Lexi was still available. It took the shelter a good 3 weeks to confirm to me that Lexi is still available. I was dying to hear this news from them, I was dreaming about her every night! I was so lucky that Ms. Ravon could find a kind passenger in a heartbeat and Nassim (now Lexi) arrived in Montreal on May 27th, only 5 weeks since I had seen her photos on the website.
It was meant to be!
Lexi was super scared in the beginning… not in my presence, with me it was love at 1st sight and thankfully she trusted me right away… she just hated to go outside, she was afraid of everything and everyone outside… all noises. She managed to escape twice when we were outside… Once only after a few days I had her. My heart broke that day… In less than 3 hours, with the help of my friends I had managed to put up 200 posters of Lost Dog with a big reward. I was freaking out… But thankfully she was lost for only several hours. Someone had called animal control and they took Lexi to an animal shelter (where I used to volunteer) and they called me…thank god for the microchip!… The 2nd time she escaped was after 2 weeks of having her… I was devastated this time. I ran after her crying and I just saw she was waiting for me in front of the building I used to live. This time she had learnt the address and just wanted to go home! Lexi was not an easy dog in the beginning, she had trust issue with people specially with guys and she was just super scared to go outside. I took some private training sessions and it helped a lot.
We connected to each other more and more every day. Soon enough, she was a totally different dog, loving people and trusting them even strangers and she gained a lot of confidence for being outside!
Since 2017 she has been living with another dog (arranged marriage in 2019) in her loving forever home. She is living a life every dog deserves…
She is the happiest, goofiest dog I’ve ever seen! Very playful… As soon as I come home, she brings her toy and wants to play. She can lick her toys for hours until she exhausts herself!
I truly cannot imagine my life without her. She definitely has made me be a happier person. I just love her to death. I was raised with all sort of small pets and never could have imagined I can love a dog this much. She is my sweet, gentle, loving fur baby! The amount of love she gives me is just beyond words… I love her so much.
I am forever grateful to Vafa, Ms Ravon and the kind passenger who made it possible for Lexi to enter my life!
Mehrnaz Saeidzadeh
