Thank you for all your nice phone calls and letters. It is neat being Oregon’s First Dog and I thought it would be fun to share with you how I got such a cool job traveling the state with my family, the Governor and First Lady of Oregon.

It got so bad that my former family took me to the Willamette Humane Society, where they hoped that someone would adopt me. Yeah, right!

 

Picture me—a grown-up dog, not a cute, fuzzy little puppy—a mixed-breed mutt, not a purebred, or even close, with one floppy ear and one canine tooth missing.

 

Picture me–in a cage with two other dogs I’d never met before, trying to keep my "game face" when people looked in the cage at us. It sure seemed hopeless to me! So hopeless that I just sat moping in the back of the cage when visitors came.

 

Then this guy came in and looked at me for a very long time. He talked to me, too. I wanted to talk back to him but it was so noisy in there! Then he left. I was hopeless.

 

A couple of days later, this gal came in and she played with me for a while in the Humane Society play area. I thought she had potential because she played ball and scratched my ears right where I like it best. I acted smart and loving and clever. Then she left, too. Was it something I said?

 

But, she came back the next day and adopted me—even though I wasn’t a cute puppy, and even though I am not a purebred. And it turns out that she is related to the nice guy who came to visit me a few days earlier so I know he had something to do with it.

 

Now I have a family, tons of visitors, and a job as Oregon’s First Dog. I am a lucky dog!

-- Hershey