We had two kids (10 yrs and 1 yr old), a 10 year old dog, and a 7 year old cat but were interested in adding one more dog to the mix. Because of our youngest child's age and our existing pets, we were planning on being very picky about this adoption. Bella's was equally as picky about us and I think that was great. After two months we finally came to an agreement and couldn't be happier with our newest family member.

There were a few bumps along the way that it seems could have been avoided. This is a volunteer organization so we expected them to be spread a little thin but the first volunteer we dealt with sometimes took days and, in a couple of cases, more than a week to respond to us. We would find a dog we thought might work and ask about him/her. When we finally heard back from them, the dog was already scheduled for a meet with someone else. Then, we hear that the meet went well and the adoption was moving forward. This happened a couple of times and there was a lack of transparency as to what was going on behind the scenes. We started feeling like other volunteers were being more responsive and we were missing opportunities because of it.

Also, in the descriptions on the website, we were specifically looking for information about whether or not a dog was kid friendly, dog friendly, and cat friendly. This information was never complete if it was included at all. You might have to read the bio and look for a mention of human siblings to get an idea of whether or not there were kids in the house. We sent a message or two alluding to the lack of information to our contact at Bellas, "This dog's description mentions children and other dogs but not cats. Do you know how she does with cats?" The response was, "Her bio does say she isn't good with cats." I went back to the website to check and slowly read through the description again but found no mention of cats. There seemed to be a uniform failure to document this information on the website and I realize that it's not possible to assess in every dog but the volunteers just seemed to have this source of information that wasn't on the website and I really feel should have been. We were more likely to know if the dog had a "wiggle butt" which was information that was put in the bios of many of their dogs. The bios were mostly cutesy, first person stories describing the dog. You really had to infer the information you needed from them and that was pretty annoying.

Then, out of nowhere, we got a message from Melissa Trotman, who I think is the founder of Bella's, saying that she was taking over our adoption. Around the same time, we started noticing that descriptions were being updated to include the important information about interactions that we'd been looking for all along. Our inquiries were answered in a reasonable amount of time and we started actually meeting dogs.

The whole process took about 2 1/2 months. 20 days of that was spent with the first Bella's volunteer who may have had her time spread a bit too thin. After that, it was a matter of us and Bella's really looking for the right pet. They do all they can to make sure that your home is a good fit. They even come out and do a home inspection. I can't say enough good things about their mission and their thoroughness in carrying it out.