When my husband and I were going through the home study process, we received mixed advice about whether or not to include information about our dogs in our profile. On the one hand, we did not want an expecting mother to reject us as adoptive parents solely because we had dogs, but on the other hand, our dogs were a part of our family.

When we put our first profile together, we chose to leave the dogs out. We never lied about having pets: We simply did not mention the subject of pets in our profile. Our "selling points" as adoptive parents had nothing to do with whether or not we owned dogs.

After we had been waiting for a year to be matched, we resubmitted our profile. Some of my friends helped me create a completely new profile, and they talked me into including our dogs in it. We only had the dogs included on the very last page of our profile. We had a picture of the two of us walking the dogs in the cul-de-sac outside of our house. We wrote something about loving our dogs but that our family would not be complete until we added our child.

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I have heard similar stories from other adoptive mothers. Whether they included pictures of their dogs or cats, the expecting mothers who matched with them were drawn to the pets. I seriously doubt that an expecting mother is flipping through the profiles looking specifically for an animal, but seeing pictures of animals who are clearly loved has to send a reassuring message.

While some expecting mothers might not like pets, I believe that including pictures of your pets is the way to go. The fact that you take good care of your pets sends a positive message. Also, many families have a cat or dog, and most expecting mothers are looking for a "normal" family to raise their baby. You want to present a complete and honest picture of your life, and your life includes pets.

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Photo Credit: Lynda Bernhardt