Zheutlin - Rescued: what second-chance dogs teach us about living with purpose, loving with abandon, and finding joy in the little things

Salina and Albie

Dogs are our link to paradise. They dont know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boringit was peace.

M ILAN K UNDERA

I N THE EARLY FALL OF 2012 , after hed been with us nearly four months, our rescue dog Albie and I walked the pine-needle-covered trails of what was fast becoming our special place: Elm Bank along the Charles River, a forested preserve outside Boston. The October air smelled of earth and woody decay, the light was brilliant and sharp, and leaves of red and gold floated gently downward on imperceptible air currents until they came to rest softly on the ground.

It was Albies first New England fall. He was, the vet surmised, about two or three years old, and he was one very lucky dog. Picked up as stray in Deville, Louisiana, the previous February, he had languished for five months in a high-kill shelter where nine out of every ten dogs that enter never leave. (Theres no precise definition of a high-kill shelter, but the term refers to shelters where a high percentage of dogs are put down rather than adopted out or returned to owners who reclaim them.) Albie was an underdog in every sense; one of the countless unwanted and unknown dogs that fill shelters throughout the South. With no one looking for him and no place to go, he was on death row with slim chances of survival. But thanks to a shelter volunteer who took a shine to him, he defied those odds and was accepted into an adoption program run by Labs4rescue, a Connecticut-based rescue organization. We saw Albies profile on their Web site, fell in love with him through some photographs and a short video, and in early July he came north on a rescue dog transport called Rescue Road Trips to join our family.

We knew from our Labs4rescue adoption coordinator, Keri Toth, that Albie had been in a concrete-and-chain-link enclosure for nearly five months in a Louisiana shelter, but we didnt knowno one knewhow hed come to be wandering alone, malnourished, and frightened. So, from the moment he landed in our arms, we vowed to do everything humanly possible to give him a wonderful life, free from fear and hunger and want. We knew nothing of his previous lifewhether hed been abandoned, neglected, or abused, or was simply lostbut it was, in part, the mystery of his life before that bound us so tightly to him. We couldnt know what wrongs and misfortunes had befallen him. But we were determined to right them anyway.

A LBIE IS A YELLOW L AB and golden retriever mixat least thats everyones best guess, because you cant really tell a dogs entire genetic heritage based on looks alone. By the time of our walk in the woods that golden October day Albie had gained some weight; he was up to about seventy-five pounds from sixty-five, and I was now able to trust he would return when called if I let him off-leash. Hed spy something, or smell something, then race off into the woods with astonishing agility, leaping over fallen trees and bounding through the dry underbrush. His fur, a yellowish wheat color, blended perfectly with the surroundings. At first, whenever he disappeared for more than a minute or two, Id get frantic and start calling for him, convinced he was gone for good. But as someone said to me once in those same woods about Albie, You may not know where he is, but he always knows where you are. I eventually came to trust those words, too.