What a beautiful story. My wife and I had a dog, Herkules, for 15 1/2 wonderful years. He left us just as covid started to get bad.

I wasn't ready for another dog. We had said we couldn't have another dog after so long with Herkules. He was (like with Belle) my wife's constant companion. My wife needed another dog.

We decided to adopt an older shelter dog, also a large dog, because older dogs don't get adopted so often, and big old dogs even less often, and here in Central Europe where so many people live in apartments without yards, even less so.

We did a lot of research and visited multiple dogs and shelters. Everything on your list for potential adopters.

I would only add: Visit your potential dog more than once before you take them home. It is best is if you can go for a walk at the shelter with them multiple times. You will get to know each other. They won't understand what is happening when you come to take them away. If you have spent some together the stress of going home with you will be significantly reduced.

That is how Shadow, our nearly 40kg Husky (probably with some malamut) came to live with us. Just days before covid lockdown started!

Shadow healed us. He particularly helped my wife, but that is a long story.

Shadow was only with us for 3 years. We found out after a year that he was actually 10 years old and not 8. That was a depressing thing to learn. We gave him the best 3 years we could. He was an angel.

Now Aegon, a "slightly smaller" Husky at only about 36-37kg is our new "fur baby." Also a shelter dog. Massive emotional trauma worse than Shadow's (those are longer stories).

After 1 1/2 years Aegon has gone from feral to fureind. Such a love. He still has issues, but we're hoping with time he'll fully heal. We help each other every day.

We can't change the world. But we can change the world for one dog.

Adopt don't shop!