dr. brittany watson is a veterinarian where she's a director of shelter animal medicine. dr. watson is here to help us understand what it means to adopt a shelter pet. thank you so much for being here. i really appreciate it. >> thank you for having me. >> no question. so my first question for you, really there's no way to perfectly assess when you walk into that shelter whether it's the perfect pet. so how do you make that search more exact? >> i think being systematic, about looking at your lifestyle, what it looks like. so a big decision what type of pet do you want, between a dog and cat, there's different needs for the animals going forward. so you need to think about what kind of lifestyle do you have, do you want to take your dog for a walk all the time, outside, and then once you made this decision you can think about what type of dog or cat you want. >> so don't even just go by this is really pretty animal. i'm going to pick this breed over another. you probably look at lifestyle. >> exactly. you know, the shelter -- the people who work at the shelter are a great reso