Years after adopting Sharav, when we were living in San Francisco, I found out how difficult it was to adopt a dog from an American shelter: they did home visits, interviewed references, required a backyard, mandated certain medical procedures, prevented puppies from being adopted into homes where all the adults worked full time.
If I hadn’t lived in Israel, I guess that I wouldn’t have been able to adopt a dog at all.
![Our first day in San Francisco, August 2011.](https://i0.wp.com/sharav.dog/wp-content/uploads/IMG_0856-jpg.webp?resize=2048%2C1536)