The one where she rescues a dog.

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love dogs. Some of my earliest memories were of me begging my parents to let me get a dog. And I wasn’t a regular kid—I was a persistent kid who wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. I would print out pictures of dogs and put them under my dad’s pillow, tape them to my mom’s mirror, and occasionally (ok. very frequently) try to bring home a neighbor’s dog who had escaped their yard, only to be told “they already have a home.” Sigh.

Fast forward to when I was ten and my parents had tried to pacify me with every other pet (hamsters, rabbits, etc.) in the hopes that that would take the place of the dog I knew I needed. Spoiler alert: It didn’t. I had finally worn my dad down. His “absolutely nots” with the long talks about how much work and responsibility dogs were had become “I don’t think so’s”. Which to me, meant we were getting somewhere! Anything other than a “no” pretty much meant, keep asking til he gives in. I was playing the long game.

Finally one day, I got the answer I was waiting for. YES. I. WAS. GETTING. A. DOG. But…not right away. My dad wanted to make sure we found the right one. He told me about some Labrador puppies that would be ready in a few weeks, and also a mutt that was adoptable through a local shelter. I wanted to go see the mutt.

My dad made sure I knew we were not taking a dog home that day. JUST looking. (Ok, sure.) He was so certain we weren’t bringing a dog home that he drove us to the shelter in his beloved Corvette.

We walked in and were ushered into a little waiting room with glass walls and a couple of chairs. A few minutes later, one of the workers brought in a skinny little tan and brown dog. That was it. I was in love. And I wasn’t leaving there without him. I remember looking into his big brown eyes, framed perfectly by his black widow’s peak, and knowing I had finally found my dog.

I looked over at my dad and gave him the best puppy dog eyes I could muster. He just smiled and said, “is this the one?” And the rest is history. We left that day with a dirty little stray dog in the back of his Corvette that he swore he wouldn’t put a dog in. We went right to the vet where they had to bathe the puppy twice just to get the dirt out of his fur. And that night, I slept on the floor of the kitchen in a sleeping bag while my new puppy “Casey” slept on his new bed by the fire, maybe the first real bed he had ever. Sometime that night he had crawled right into the sleeping bag with me. He knew he was home.

Kelsey and Casey, 2010