Our girls had decided our house needed a dog.
Madie and Sloan were six. Peyton was ten. All three of them had been asking for one for a while.
We’d always had cats, but our last cat, Sydney, had passed away. I’d grown up with dogs. I had one named Argo when I was a boy. He was the dog who lost his tail before he even had a name, but that’s another story.
When my younger brother was born, he got his own dog, Mushka. Despite whatever his name might suggest, Mushka grew into a 185-pound monster who could stand on his hind legs and put his paws over Dad’s shoulders.
So dogs weren’t foreign territory.
Commitment was.
Our search started when the girls spotted one of those adopt-a-pet events at PetSmart. There were a dozen or so dogs there in every size imaginable. They petted them, talked to them and probably would have taken all of them home if we’d let them.
Laura and I decided we should keep looking until we found the right match.
Which was really just our way of buying more time.
Eventually the girls started scouring the Nebraska Humane Society website. Those dogs felt different. They weren’t visiting a pet store for the afternoon. They were waiting for homes.
So we decided that when we were ready, that was where we would go.
Then came August 3, 2013.
I happened to be home alone with Sloan and Peyton. Laura and Madie were out shopping for school supplies because school started in a couple of weeks.
Sloan, Peyton and I decided to go look at dogs.
Just look.
You know how that goes.
We walked through the Humane Society looking at all the dogs waiting in their kennels until Sloan and Peyton spotted a cute black Lab mix.
That was pretty much it for them.
We went to the front desk and asked if we could meet the dog. They put us in a visitation room and told us to wait while someone brought her in.
That was when we met Katie.
She was about two years old, a Lab and Whippet mix. She was young and thin, with big feet that made her look like she still hadn’t quite grown into herself.
She was also shy.
Quiet.
Nervous.
But considering where she was, none of that seemed particularly surprising.
We sat with her and Katie cautiously accepted the attention.
Then we called Laura.
We told her she and Madie should probably come down and meet this dog.
That phone call was more or less the moment we adopted Katie. We just hadn’t signed anything yet.
When everyone arrived, the six of us sat together in the visitation room while Laura and I went through Katie’s paperwork.
She was spayed. Her shots were current. She appeared healthy.
Then we got to the surrender sheet.
Apparently Katie was quite a problem.
She threatened to bite children and adults.
She was a habitual digger.
She disliked rough play.
She barked and whined.
She hated loud voices and noises.
She constantly escaped from the fenced yard.
She hated car rides.
During the day, she had been confined to a single room in the house.
It was a pretty impressive list of reasons not to adopt a dog.
Except the dog sitting in front of us didn’t seem like that dog.
She hadn’t shown any aggression toward us. She was surrounded by three excited girls and seemed nervous, but not angry. If anything, she seemed to enjoy the attention.
So we decided to take her home.
We filled out the adoption paperwork while they got Katie ready. We hadn’t exactly planned on leaving with a dog, so we didn’t even have a proper leash. The Humane Society gave us a nylon one, and the six of us headed for the parking lot with our newest family member.
The automatic front doors opened.
Katie stepped outside.
You could tell immediately that she was thrilled to be out of there.
We had walked maybe twenty feet when Laura clicked the remote for our soccer-mom van.
The sliding door opened.
The van was probably fifty yards away.
Katie saw it.
She pulled herself loose from the girls and took off.
This dog that supposedly hated car rides sprinted across the parking lot, launched herself through the open sliding door and disappeared inside the van.
By the time we caught up, Katie was sitting in the very back.
Well, sort of sitting.
Her rear end was planted in the middle of the bench seat while her front paws were still on the floor. She was panting from the sprint and looking at us like:
What are you waiting for? Let’s get the hell out of here.
So much for hating car rides.
She sat calmly for the entire ride, smiling in my rearview mirror as we drove to the pet store to buy her a real leash and her first squeaky plush toy.
At home, she cautiously started figuring out her new surroundings while patiently enduring far more attention from three kids than she was probably ready for.
By the end of that first day, we were already beginning to wonder about that surrender sheet.
That night we took Katie for her first family walk.
This time we had a proper leash. We adjusted it carefully, making sure it was comfortable and secure.
We walked down to the park.
And then Katie saw a rabbit.
We learned two things simultaneously.
First, Katie loved rabbits.
Second, Whippets have a secret superpower.
Their heads are almost exactly as narrow as their necks.
Katie threw herself backward, slipped straight out of her carefully fitted leash and launched after that rabbit at approximately Mach 3.
She was unbelievably fast.
Fortunately, the rabbit was faster.
Eventually Katie gave up the chase and came back to us.
We bought her a rabbit toy after that.
She loved it to death.
Literally.
Over the next few weeks, Katie settled into the family.
I bought a hammock-style cover for the back seat of my car, and she became my car-wash partner. She loved watching the spinning brushes, flashing lights and water roll across the windows. Sometimes she would lean forward from the back seat and lick my ear.
I took that as a thank-you.
Then came her first Fourth of July with us.
According to the surrender sheet, Katie hated loud noises. So taking her outside while people were setting off fireworks probably wasn’t our brightest idea.
Katie didn’t care.
The explosions didn’t even seem to faze her. She’d watch a firework shoot into the sky, follow it until it exploded, and then start chasing after it.
Apparently fireworks weren’t something to be afraid of.
They were prey.
If Katie could have flown, I’m pretty sure she would have caught a few.
She loved walks in the snow.
She loved chasing rabbits.
She loved roughhousing with the girls until she was exhausted, then rolling onto her back for a belly rub before falling asleep.
She didn’t hate car rides.
She didn’t hate loud noises.
She didn’t hate rough play.
She didn’t hate children.
She didn’t hate adults.
She didn’t attack anyone.
She didn’t spend her life trying to escape from us.
She did bark when somebody walked past the house.
So I guess the surrender sheet got one thing right.
But even then, she wasn’t trying to scare anybody away.
Katie was excited to see people.
Any people.
Other dogs.
Pretty much anybody who might possibly become her friend.
We had gone to the Humane Society that afternoon thinking we were rescuing a dog described on a piece of paper as difficult, aggressive and impossible to contain.
The dog we brought home wasn’t any of those things.
She just needed somewhere she wanted to stay.
If this story resonated with you, you’re not alone.
