A newly adopted rescue dog appeared scared to go to sleep in her new home for fear she might wake up and find out it was all a dream.
Sara Zosche shared adorable footage of her new four-legged friend Olive, fighting the urge to fall asleep on her owner's couch out of some sense that her new home is too good to be true.
Shelter dogs have a small window of time to make an impression on a prospective owner. A 2014 study published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science found that, on average, shelter visitors interact with just one dog during their time there and that these interactions last around eight minutes.
It's often the case that people will plump for the confident, outgoing and playful canines. But there was something about Olive's vulnerability that caught Zosche and her partner Crystal's eyes when they visited a shelter in South Jersey last week.
"I saw Olive cowering, shaking in the corner of her kennel," Zosche told Newsweek. Olive was one of a litter of abandoned puppies who were named after pizza toppings by staff at the shelter.
"I asked to hold her and she just kind of stole my heart," she said. "She cried when they took her back to her kennel so I put in an application right there to adopt her. They called me the next day saying I was approved."
Zosche and her partner lost their previous dog, Sophie, to kidney disease just five months ago but had decided their "hearts were ready to love again."
"She was still shaking when I went to pick her up that day," Zosche said. "When she saw that I had come back to pick her up she was so happy. It was like she like she was saying 'are you here for me?'"
Zosche could tell Olive was nervous about where she might be headed. "On the way home she shook like a leaf in the car," she said. "Once I got her home I sat with her on the couch, she started to fall asleep instantly. She was absolutely exhausted. She had been in the shelter for a while so I doubt she had slept well there."
Even so, as Zosche got up later that evening to make dinner, she could feel Olive's eyes on her. The resulting look was captured on camera in a video posted to TikTok under the handle @sobersaruhh. In the clip, she can be seen looking back at Zosche from her position on the couch. At the time of writing, the video has been watched over 250,000 times.
"She just wouldn't take her eyes off of me. She stayed on the couch but fell asleep basically sitting up between the couch cushions with her head resting so she could see me. It was a sweet moment," Zosche said.
"I think if I could read her mind while she was watching me from the couch... she just looked like she didn't want to fall asleep, despite how exhausted she was—almost like she didn't want it to be a dream she was dreaming. But, it was reality—I'm her mommy now and this is her 'furever' home."
The video was posted to TikTok alongside a caption that read: "Olive is my favorite gift of sobriety." Zosche has been chronicling her journey through alcoholism and recovery on her TikTok and sees the addition of Olive as a crucial step in this process.
"Without getting sober I wouldn't be able to truly be present to experience the pure joy that comes from the bond Olive has created with me," she said. "Being sober allows me to experience life to the fullest (the joy and pain). Without sobriety I wouldn't be able to be the best version of myself and a 'dog mom' to Olive."
