Hi, I’m Elissa

It Started with a Sheltie Named Romeo

I was three and a half when my mother drove up to Norwalk, Connecticut, to look at a litter of Shetland Sheepdogs. My father had been threatening to bring home a German Shepherd for protection we didn’t need, so she got there first. I still remember going down into that woman’s basement. She’d gone in wanting a sable, but a little tricolor came straight over to her. “Oh,” she said, “he’s like a little Romeo.” That settled his name.

My mother kept a poster of every dog breed on the wall and took me to the local dog shows, so I grew up able to tell a Sheltie from a Collie across a field. She and I put Romeo through obedience school together, and I was the one who walked him in the ring. He hated the car, and he hated it when we got in the swimming pool. He’d run the whole length of it, back and forth, until we got out. He was with us until I was sixteen.

After meeting someone with a Bichon Frise, that decision made itself. Frankie was six months old when I took him to Key West on his first road trip, and he stayed with me for almost sixteen years. He flew to New York more than once. He went to New Mexico. Between the two of us, we covered DC, Massachusetts, Vermont, and most of the highway in between.

All of which is a long way of saying that I have never really known life without a dog by my side. I have spent decades learning what dogs need, not from a manual, but from living alongside them and caring for other people’s beloved pets. When you book with Niftee Pet Services, you are choosing a lifetime of experience, understanding, and genuine love for dogs.