My name is: Riley
I came from: Cyprus
Now I live in: North West, Manchester
My favourite things are: Sitting on laps, doing zoomies in the garden after dinner, chasing fluffy dogs on walks, dropping tennis balls in water so my owners have to wade in to retrieve it and having my chest stroked and scratched!

Riley’s story

It’s been almost exactly one year since our beautiful, crazy Riley came to us all the way from Cyprus. Being a dog lover in general, I followed Underdog International on Instagram and one day saw a picture of little baby Riley, and instantly fell in love. 

After some emails back and forth, and a home check, it was confirmed! Riley was going to be with us in a matter of weeks! The wait was excruciating, but Eve was brilliant with keeping us updated and we got a few extra pictures and videos in the meantime. 

We still remember the day of Riley’s arrival; we were told a specific time and location (it was only around a 30 minute drive from our home address) and we waited patiently and anxiously. Finally we saw the pet courier service van pull in and several equally excited dog parents-to-be leapt out of their cars. Luckily, Riley was the first dog that they got out from the van. We looked up the pet courier service and it was all very professional and impressive. They also had an Instagram page and they uploaded a video once they had picked Riley and the other dogs up from France! 

Riley was nervous to begin with and very wary of my partner, Joe. Within minutes, Riley warmed up to me (much to my joy) but it took him a day to start trusting Joe. As he was roughly 6 months old when he came to us, he still needed training. He was pretty much toilet trained and has only ever had a couple of accidents, mostly all at the start. We noticed that Riley suffered from some separation anxiety and wasn’t a fan of strangers so we took him to puppy classes, which was brilliant- he passed with flying colours! We are still in touch with one of the dog behaviourists (who are there to help you throughout your Underdog’s entire life!), David, who has given us some great advice and we are still working on reducing Riley’s anxiety towards strangers, but we are definitely getting there!

From our experience of getting an Underdog, Joe and I have agreed that we could never get a dog from anywhere else but from this amazing charity. The work they do is amazing and I can’t thank Eve and the rest of the fabulous team enough for bringing Riley into our lives. The support they give and offer not only reassures you throughout the whole process, but they are also there for you after the adoption has taken place. We cannot wait to see what the future holds for our little family, and to hopefully welcome more Underdogs in the future! 

- Stephanie