Panda and Dallas of @packofpandas.Photo:@packofpandas
@packofpandas
Working from home shortly after moving to North Texas during the pandemic, Carly D’Eliseo decided it was time to adopt a dog.
“Growing up in South Florida with my family, we always had a house full of dogs — I’ve been a dog lover from a very young age,” she tells PEOPLE. “I always had a dream to one day be able to foster dogs on my own.”
Once she saw pup Panda onPetfinderin 2020, “I knew: This is my dog,” she says, adding that actual pandas have “always been my spirit animal” (she’s loved them since age 5!). She drove 90 minutes to meet the pup, fulfilling a dream to have a dog that resembles a panda — and the rest is history.
In the months that followed, D’Eliseo, 32, got more involved with rescue work and fostering, eventually meeting another panda-esque dog named Dallas.
“I started getting tags in videos of dogs that had panda-like markings,” she recalls. “Cody’s Friends Rescue— a Dallas-Fort Worth-based rescue where I adopted Panda from — tagged me in a video of Dallas, and I was like, there’s no way. I’ve never seen a dog that looked like Panda before, and now there’s this little puppy that looks exactly like her!”
After agreeing to foster Dallas, “I was again like, ‘This is my dog.’ There’s no way I just all of a sudden moved to Texas, have never seen these types of dogs in my life and then two of them appear within about two years of each other.”
Panda and Dallas of @packofpandas.@packofpandas
“The minute I brought Dallas home, it’s like it was meant to be,” she continues. “They’re always next to each other.”
Panda, now 7, is the “more relaxed and calm” of the two, while Dallas, 2, is “full of energy,” D’Eliseo says. “But they are attached at the hip. Dallas doesn’t really know much of a life without Panda.” She continues to foster as well, joking it’s “a revolving door of dogs coming in and out of my house.”
The rescue and foster work has helped her feel more at home in her new state, easing the “homesickness and making me really feel like I was meant to be where I am — the right place at the right time,” D’Eliseo shares. “It’s the bigger purpose of moving and getting out of my comfort zone: what was always meant for me found me.”
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Panda and Dallas have become a sensation onTikTokandInstagram@packofpandas, and D’Eliseo is grateful their story is encouraging others to adopt. “You can find your dream dog at a shelter if you just give them a chance,” she says. “I want everyone to be able to feel the type of love you can receive from a rescue dog — there really isn’t anything like it!”
source: people.com
