Working for Petfinder.com has its hazards -- or perks, if you will.
Take the case of Tim Blanchard, who helps keep the technical side of
Petfinder running.
"I found Geronimo on the side of the road in Kingman, Arizona, when he was just eight weeks old -- someone had discarded him," Tim says. "I picked him up and took him to the nearest vet, and he stayed with me until he succumbed to cancer in December of 2010."
The loss was devastating, and Tim vowed to not put himself through such a loss ever again. When friends urged him to get another dog, he countered that he was not a "dog person," that Geronimo had been a special case and now that he was gone there wouldn't be another dog in his life.
So he buckled down at work to get over his grief. At Petfinder, he performed test searches and invariably used the search criteria: Breed: Catahoula; age: baby; location: DC area. One day that search brought up a photo of Betty, an 8-week-old Catahoula mix at Lucky Dog Animal Rescue in Washington, DC. All day as he worked on his task, he kept seeing Betty.
"She looked an awful lot like Geronimo when he was a pup, and something about those eyes just kept gnawing at me," Tim says. "On Tuesday morning, I caved. I sent my wife, Christie, the link to Betty's page. She responded via IM, 'Cute! Go get her. Now!' "
These days, Betty is Tim's constant companion -- at his feet if he's at his desk or beside him if he's on the couch. And Tim is officially a "dog person" again.
Read Betty's story in Tim's words.
When Tim started working for Petfinder last year, he was the
proud parent of Geronimo, a 13-year-old Catahoula leopard dog. "I found Geronimo on the side of the road in Kingman, Arizona, when he was just eight weeks old -- someone had discarded him," Tim says. "I picked him up and took him to the nearest vet, and he stayed with me until he succumbed to cancer in December of 2010."
The loss was devastating, and Tim vowed to not put himself through such a loss ever again. When friends urged him to get another dog, he countered that he was not a "dog person," that Geronimo had been a special case and now that he was gone there wouldn't be another dog in his life.
So he buckled down at work to get over his grief. At Petfinder, he performed test searches and invariably used the search criteria: Breed: Catahoula; age: baby; location: DC area. One day that search brought up a photo of Betty, an 8-week-old Catahoula mix at Lucky Dog Animal Rescue in Washington, DC. All day as he worked on his task, he kept seeing Betty.
"She looked an awful lot like Geronimo when he was a pup, and something about those eyes just kept gnawing at me," Tim says. "On Tuesday morning, I caved. I sent my wife, Christie, the link to Betty's page. She responded via IM, 'Cute! Go get her. Now!' "
These days, Betty is Tim's constant companion -- at his feet if he's at his desk or beside him if he's on the couch. And Tim is officially a "dog person" again.
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