There were plenty of reasons not to do it and I had always talked myself out of it, convinced there would be a better time for it. Yet on March 3, 2011, I found myself at a pet rescue, walking in the door still not entirely convinced getting a dog was a good idea. I'm just going to look, I told myself. See what they have. Maybe they wouldn't even have any.
"It's a trendy breed," said Olga Setina, an administrator at the centre. "Everyone rushes to get them... But they're bulldogs, they've got teeth, they've got health issues, they've got everything. And then people abandon them," she added.