Jennifer Sander - The Dog with the Old Soul

“Adoptions ended a half hour ago,” said the front desk person, who was a different woman than the night before. Her name tag read “Staci.”

Crushed, we went home, nonetheless determined to be there right when the shelter opened the next day.

We arrived ten minutes before the shelter opened, and a coldness that didn’t come from the damp December air enveloped me when I saw about a half dozen other people in front of us in line.

“Are they all here to adopt?” I whispered to my husband. “You don’t think someone here wants to adopt Chloe, do you?”

My husband gave me a look. “Well, we’d better hightail it to the front desk as soon as possible,” he said.

When the front doors opened, we were the first to the desk. Staci, the woman who had turned us down the night before, was working again today. She smiled, pushing a lock of cocoa-brown hair out of her face. “You’re here to adopt the basset hound.”

We nodded like fools.

“I’ll go get her.” She rose to leave the desk, then turned to face us. “You know, she’s very vocal.”

We made assuring noises and stepped back when she sent a volunteer to get Chloe. A mother and two teenage girls came up to the desk. The mother said to an employee behind the desk—the one with the platinum blond ponytail who had allowed us to open Chloe’s pen the night before—“We’re here to adopt Chloe, the basset hound.”

Our eyes went wide. Wait, not our basset.

“We were here last night,” the mother explained, “and started to fill out paperwork, but they said we couldn’t adopt her, because it was too late.”

The blond employee, who had not heard our conversation a moment ago with Staci at the front desk, said, “Okay, I’ll go get her.”

My husband went up to Staci, who had just sent the volunteer to retrieve Chloe. “I don’t want to cause a scene, but we just heard someone say they wanted to adopt the basset that you’re getting for us.”

Staci looked at us. “Oh.” She got the attention of the blond employee, who came back to the desk and listened as Staci told our story.

“Yeah, I remember you,” said the blond woman. “But this family did start the paperwork.” They looked at each other, and then the blond woman hurried to the back, where the volunteer was supposedly getting “our” dog.

How could this happen?

We had tried twice to take Chloe home, we knew we were ready for her, and now our little addition might be ripped away from us before we even had a chance to have her. We looked at the other family discreetly. They looked nice enough, with their perfect white smiles and their matching sweatshirts with their private high school’s name emblazoned on them. But she was supposed to be our dog.

Finally, the blond woman came back, holding the leash to Chloe, who was elated to be outside her kennel. We and the other family stood there awkwardly. The blond woman walked up to me and held out the leash. “Here you go,” she said.

I looked at the leash in my hand. And smiled at it.

Twenty minutes later, after filling out enough paperwork to apply for a home loan, we walked out of the shelter the proud new guardians of a vocal, four-year-old basset hound, our hearts still stinging a bit at the image in our minds of the disappointed teenagers as they dejectedly walked past us to go home empty-handed. We never found out why the shelter chose us over the other family.

On the way to the car, we called our newest family member by the name we had chosen the night before, Bridgette—a name we felt encapsulated her unique, sweet yet spunky nature. We later found out that the name means “the exalted one” and “one who is strong and protective.”

“Do you think she’s happy to be out of there?” my husband asked, trying to get a look at her through the rearview window as he drove. I looked at the backseat, where Bridgette, with her long, thick body, flung herself onto her side like a breaching whale and breathed a contented sigh.

Four months later I was diagnosed with infertility, and we discovered that the only way we could have a biological family of our own was by in vitro fertilization. As I underwent testing and surgery, Bridgette was steadfast. And as I await a risky and uncertain treatment, she remains at my feet, showing a constancy that throws into sharp relief the actions of those in her previous life, those who had been entrusted with her care—a constancy that challenges me to return what she has given me. I stand at a threshold, facing an uncertain future of my own, and her old-soul eyes serve as a daily reminder of grace as I am brought through the doors of a temporary holding place that I hope will eventually lead me home.

Katherine Traci

November. Dark. Cold. I was driving home from a late-night writing workshop, a brutal night of fellow writers casually critiquing what was my own heart typed out neatly on the page. The exact same heart that had been trampled on by a liar three weeks prior. We’d gone to Venice to fall more deeply in love, cement it all in ancient stone. But no. Instead the medieval city was the scene of a modern breakup.

“Good plan, Kate,” I scoffed to myself in my car, gripping the wheel and picturing what I should have done instead—pushed him into the dirty Grand Canal. I hadn’t pushed him in. I’d gotten on the plane home like a good girl and flown back to an empty house, an empty heart. Tonight I’d hoped that writing it down and sharing it, letting others know how I felt, would help me heal. And maybe it would in the long run; but right then, alone, surrounded by strangers, empty and at a loss, I sat waiting to turn left onto the dark on-ramp, headed home. My head turned to follow a tiny cat that streaked across the road as it crossed my line of vision.

Feral, I thought as it headed toward the freeway. Odd behavior for any smart feral that lived in the area. I watched as what I now saw was a kitten run up the embankment toward a busy freeway overpass. It was almost 10:00 p.m. and the street was empty. I was tired… I was hungry… I was sad… I wanted to be home. The light changed. I stayed where I was.

Hmm, well timed on behalf of the cat, I thought. I had left class at the right second, had driven the right speed, had paused just long enough to turn at the exact moment that the little cat decided to sprint across six full lanes of the street in front of my truck.

Sighing, I felt the full weight of my own empty life hit me. If I couldn’t push a man in a canal, at least I could rescue a kitty on the side of the road. I pulled over as far as possible onto the left shoulder and hit my hazards. There he was, hunkered down in the greenery far above me. I rolled down my window. I watched the kitten. The kitten watched me. I got out of the car.

I looked up the steep embankment at him. Ice plant. Damn. It was cold. I am a 911 dispatch operator. For me, hazards lurk everywhere, even in the safest of homes. A slippery shower, a frayed electrical cord. So many of the calls we take are the result of foolhardy behavior. This would fall easily into that category.

I have nothing to put a cat in. I don’t even have a blanket. I have no idea what I am doing, I thought as I looked around. And I’m mostly a dog girl. I’ll go out of my way to rescue dogs. But a cat? I shivered and tried to focus on a workable plan.

I decided to try and approach him. If he ran up toward the top of the embankment, I’d have to back off. I didn’t want to be responsible for a cat on a busy freeway. I started up the steep embankment and the kitten didn’t move. He blinked at me. He sat in the ice plant near the freeway on-ramp and slowly blinked his big teary eyes, open, shut, open. The light shone down from the streetlamp and his eyes glowed. Open. Shut.