I’ve had dogs all my life, well only a couple because I was lucky that they lived so long, and I believe that animals bring a special levity and joy to one’s existence that only they can. When my fiance and I first moved to Portland, we had to take whatever place we could find and that meant agreeing to a “no pets” policy. We were fine with it at the time, just finding a place was a miracle in itself. But after settling in, the absence of a furry compadre started to wear on us. We approached our landlords, who were the owners of the property, a few times about getting a dog and despite desiring a dog themselves, denied us thrice. After the last time they denied us I had an epiphany coming home from the store one day and seeing a woman walking her dog, let’s start a petition. As I crossed the street I muttered to myself, “let us have a dog” and just like that, I had a name.

I designed a logo, website and print material for letushaveadog.com to help us in our new dog-loving journey. I looked around for petition solutions and found some online but didn’t like the idea of a third party solution so I built my own form and a place to display all of the supporters that were nice enough to sign our petition. We didn’t have a goal of a number signatures at first but as our cause grew, through social media and other outlets, we decided on 1,000 signatures by August 13th, 2015. We not only accomplished that goal but we received 1,197 signatures and acquired over 2,200 followers on Instagram.

Despite the success of the site our landlords didn’t budge, I guess the creativity of our method was lost on them. But it worked all out, we bought our own house and adopted our puppy Zeppelin on August 25, 2017. He is a lab mix rescue from Puerto Rico and we’re lucky that he got off of the island before all of those hurricanes hit. He is a great dog and we feel very lucky to have him in our lives and we wouldn’t have met him if it weren’t for all of the connection that we made through letushaveadog.com. I wanted to put a screen shot of the signature page but it is over 33,000 pixels tall 😉

Visit – Let Us Have a Dog – site no longer active