They say you never forget your first love and I have found this to be true. My first love at the Baltimore Humane Society was Sparkle. She was a sweetheart who was more interested in loving a human than walking or treats. She didn't have to wait long to find her forever home. Since Sparkle I have fallen in love with many other of my doggy friends including numerous pit bull mixes.

T.J. came to us when his owner fell on some hard times. He quickly became a staff and volunteer favorite with his strapping looks and special need- T.J. is deaf. Many agencies would have been quick to turn him away, being that he is a pit bull and is deaf, training will be a little more complicated. Baltimore Humane is a pit bull friendly shelter and our Shelter Director has extensive experience dealing with deaf dogs. We found out that T.J. is extremely intelligent and is catching on to the sign language very well.

I am the proud owner of a 4 year old Pit Bull mix named Sierra. My boyfriend Wes and I adopted Sierra in August of 2009 from the Baltimore Humane Society. If someone would have asked me a year ago if I wanted a Pit Bull I would have definitely said no. With the name Pit Bull comes all the stereotypes such as: vicious, aggressive and, of course, dog fighters. I, like many others, believed all these stereotypes to be true of every dog associated with the name Pit Bull.

If you’re like me, your name lands on a lot of animal welfare group’s mailing lists. When culling through their stock solicitations, it occurred to me that not only are they strikingly similar in appearance, but tend to focus on the same pitiful stories about abused and abandoned animals over and over. This sort of sensational fundraising may tug at your heart strings, but it often fails to provide a big picture view of how your donation improves animal welfare. After all, if you’re donating money, you probably want to see it have lasting impact.

When I think about what a diamond means to some people, it conjures words such as precious, priceless, unique, valuable, beautiful and treasured. These descriptive adjectives can all be applied to two of the Baltimore Humane Societies’ recently adopted dogs. However, this adjective list referring to two canine friends could extend much longer than these few words mentioned here.