Last week I wrote about our old cat Hank, whom Marsha brought home from the Humane Society once she realized what could happen to him otherwise. What I didn’t mention is why Hank had been on my mind. Our older daughter in South Carolina just adopted a stray 80-pound dog. Watching the ensuing drama evolve from a distance, I had a pretty good idea how the plot would thicken.
A park dog
It all started one afternoon after our daughter and her husband finished a round of disc golf. As they were leaving the park, some people at a Little League practice asked whether they knew who owned the dog that had been wandering around for hours.
Our daughter, being the take-charge person that she is, decided she would take the initiative to ensure the dog could get to animal control. Unfortunately, animal control closed at 5pm. The police told them that unless the dog was dying or attacking someone, they couldn’t get involved. A vet scanned him for a microchip and found an owner and an address, but when they drove to the address, the house was boarded up and looked like nobody had lived there for years. Our son-in-law left a WhatsApp message to both his parents and us, expressing his thoughts. “This dog is like super well groomed. So like clearly someone is looking after this dog.”
With nowhere else to take him, the dog spent the night at their place. Our daughter bought the dog a stuffed sloth and a bone so he would have some company that first night.
The shelter
The next morning, our daughter took the dog to the local shelter. It had been open for only two hours and had already taken in seven dogs, including this one. The staff had recognized the pattern right away. “Park dog? Neutered? Puppy? No collar? Yup okay. Can we call you in a week?” The staff didn’t seem optimistic that an owner would come to claim the dog.
Unfortunately, the shelter doesn’t accept outside toys for the dogs to take into the kennels with them, so the staff threw the sloth away right in front of the dog, much to our daughter’s dismay. She also had to sign paperwork that would make the dog available for adoption after a ten-day stray hold.
Timing was of the essence. The staff told our daughter that the dog was more likely to be adopted than claimed by a prior owner, and that the shelter couldn’t guarantee the dog a space there for more than ten days. Later that day, our daughter learned that a second dog, a young and well-kept female pitbull mix, had been found near the same park and was the very next dog logged in after hers.
Personally, I was pretty surprised by how routine all of this is. In Portland, it just feels like abandoned dogs are a lot less common, but perhaps I am just “sheltered!”
The trick
I could tell how this story was going to progress. Once our daughter had brought the dog home and given him a sloth and a bone, I knew the deal was done.
I texted her that it was a little bit like Fishy. “The trick is to never get attached,” I wrote, “but I understand what happens once you click over.” She wrote back that it “totally does give fishy,” and that her husband could attest she had cried when the shelter took the stuffed sloth away. She added, “Yeah the trick was 1000% not to get attached.”
Marsha was out when we traded those texts, so once Marsha got home, our daughter called, and the three of us went over the whole thing again. Before long we were talking about Fishy.
Fishy
When our younger daughter was somewhere around ten, a friend’s mom gave her a betta fish. My first reaction was about how rude it was to give such a “gift.” When I was growing up, my mom kept a family fish tank and bought fish for it from the pet store. The ones that survived grew old and big, but a lot of them just died, and I watched it happen more times than I wanted to. I told Marsha immediately upon learning of the gift that we should give the fish back. When that idea went nowhere, I joked that we should just flush him before any of us got attached.
Of course, we kept him. Our daughter named him Mushu, after the dragon in Mulan. Before long, all of us just called him Fishy. He came to us with an infection in his swim bladder, and he had to pump his fins hard just to reach the top of the tank to eat. I bought him a tank heater, some rocks, and a plant whose leaves he could rest on during his climb. I bought medicine for the infection, and between the two of us, Marsha and I made more trips to the pet store in those few months than I care to count. We were both fully invested in the drama.
Fishy didn’t make it. Our younger daughter and I buried him together in the yard. Afterward she sadly told Marsha, “I think I know why Dad wanted to flush the fish.” The joke had never really been about not caring. I knew that once we took him in, we would do everything we could to keep him alive. I’d been through the experience of having fish with preexisting health issues, and I knew it still hurt to lose them.
Our older daughter was old enough to remember Fishy. So when she cried over a stuffed sloth at the shelter, she knew exactly what had happened to her. So did I.
The list
With her take-charge inclination, our daughter didn’t simply follow her heart. She sent us a numbered list of everything that would need to happen before agreeing to even foster the dog. She would check with her landlord about an extra security deposit, get a new renter’s insurance quote for a pittie mix, line up friends around her travel schedule, work out a budget with her husband, and ask whether she could crate him at her office for a one-week trial. She also planned to wait until he went up for general adoption, in case his owner came for him first. The list didn’t help her sleep. She was still thinking about the dog constantly.
Soon after, our daughter and her husband decided they would bring the dog home.
The original owner
As it turned out, the owner did come forward during the stray hold. He admitted he could no longer take care of the dog. At first, he refused to sign the paperwork releasing the dog, because he knew what a release could mean for a dog at that shelter. He signed only after the staff told him that our daughter was ready to take the dog home. I don’t know his circumstances, and I’m not in a position to judge him. What I do know is that he kept that dog well groomed until the end, and when it mattered, he wanted to know the dog would be safe.
It reminded me of Hank, who was taken from his mother early to be sold at a pet store. The people who bought him at the pet store wrote wonderful things about him when they gave him up for adoption but just couldn’t keep him. I hope Hank had a happy home with us, and later with my mother-in-law.
After the original owner left the shelter, everything moved quickly. After receiving the call, our daughter made an appointment at a local pet groomer and then picked him up. Nearly every message we’ve received since has been a photo of the dog. He is huge.
Oki
The dog’s microchip had a name on it that he never answered to. Our daughter renamed him Oki, a shortened version of Marsha’s mom’s maiden name. To me, I felt it was appropriate for an Asian woman to be heard calling for “Oki” at the dog park.
Of course, Oki ended up with our daughter because she got attached. It happened to Marsha with Hank. It happened to all of us with Fishy. In the photo I attached to this post, Oki is sitting on her couch at home with his tongue out, looking very much like he belonged there all along.
AI disclosure: I used AI tools during the drafting and editing process to help clarify structure and language. All ideas, judgments, and final wording are my own.