Adopted

The Kill Shelter. What a dreary, raucous place. The equivalent of the Green Mile for domesticated, thrown away animals. Out of sight, out of mind…until it is in your sights…

…and in your lungs.

They say you can never forget the smell of burning flesh. I say, you can never forget the smell of fear that permeates the cinder block cells, transgressing the cold chain link boundary between hope and desperation. You can see it in their eyes, feel it in the air.

Madness abounds.

Others…swallowed silently by the hysteria.

The Kill Shelter. It wreaks of fear.

Its floors, cold as the humans who put them here. Its air, filled with the pains of a barking cacophony. You can hear every word, in every bark, all the barks uniting in one common, “help…” even carrying the echoes of those who long ago made these sounds in these cells.

Who was I to think I could just come here and browse, as if I were deciding whether to check out a book? Just a casual afternoon stroll to the Kill Shelter, “let us ‘look’ and consume if we choose.”

The dilemma: there are too many! This place…it is not meant for browsing. In choosing any, the rest are condemned. In doing nothing, we are condemned.

How do you stop and give attention to only one? How can you give hope to one and give another…condemnation?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Death comes for the feared, the ugly. Some things we share with animals…

In that moment, I don’t know. I do not. I don’t even know how I did it. We had discussed as a family that our next dog needed to be a rescue. This is where the dogs are…the ones that need rescued. The ones that need grace; the ones that need a savior…or two.

I do not know why he was there or who previously owned him. His paperwork disclosed he had been there a few weeks, picked up on Victory Drive. He was unsightly, scraggly, with coarse grey and white hair, front lower teeth filed to chiclets, scarred front legs from abuse, teeth indentions atop his head near his right ear, with his rear haunches bony and ribs saliently protruding from flesh that had sunk around them.

But…his face. He had the sweetest face.

His eyes, apprehensive, also whispered, “Don’t be afraid,” innocence betraying cultural prejudices.

But wait…this is not just a dog; this is a pit bull and not much of a mix.

He was, informally, a “gator pit,” with a low profile, about 24” off the ground. He was stocky, the incarnation of a Mack Truck in a canine. With a low center of gravity and an elongated body, he had a pits typical block head, which acted like an oil slick for a collar that would not stay on. His front legs turned outward, so that his elbows would point away from his frame when standing, giving the impression he was bench pressing the earth when he would rise.

I stopped. Stared. He was not the craziest dog in the place, nor the most docile. He had some personality…and that friendly face…affixed to that scary looking body. I had never been around pits, but something about this one said, “me…please?”

The animal control employee came over, unlocked the gate, and put the small rope collar around his neck. He assured me, despite the aggressive “look,” he is anything but. He opened the small corral in the “control” center lobby, closed the door and sat down. Turning to me, he said “watch this.” The man pulled a dog biscuit from the plastic dispensary on the shelf. Seated, he put the dog biscuit in his mouth, between his teeth, and motioned for the dog to come toward him. The grey dog with a white chest and collar, came over, and gingerly removed the biscuit from his mouth like he was taking candy from a baby.

Unbelievable. A literal man eater…swapping biscuits by mouth.

Like the public, I had been led to believe that pit bulls and their ilk were a scourge. Sure, he was a good-looking dog, well…he was the best looking of all the bad looking dogs, but I had four kids at home, four little kids. Seeing this dog take a treat from the mouth of another human was witnessing a miracle.

Then he said, “here…you try.”

I tried my own luck, same trick. Success!

Not to be fooled by an Oscar winning canine, I decided to spend some time in the small, enclosed area with him. He jumped on me while I was seated. He was friendly, overly friendly, but restless, trying to make sense of this limbo that felt free but was not freedom…

I tried to gauge his strength, so I pet him thoroughly to determine any aggressive inclinations. He was checking out…but how, how do I just bring home the most feared dog in America…to 4 kids, one of whom had just turned three years old! Would a good dad do that???

Am I bringing home a cutely packaged murder machine?

This forgotten one, this “pit bull” that everyone would walk past because they “don’t want to risk it snapping,” would most likely never leave this shelter. Of the roughly 1.2 million dogs euthanized annually in the United States, 40% of those are pit bulls. I had no reason to believe this dog was a threat, though, admittedly I did not know this dog. I only knew him “here,” in this moment, not at a home in an environment totally foreign to him.

Or in a home…totally home to him.

Recalling, I called my wife and told her about him. She did not decide; she left it up to me. I had never gotten an animal from the Kill Shelter. I rarely do anything as impulsive as a multiyear commitment to a dog…and certainly did not imagine I would bring home a pit mix to my family.

God works in mysterious ways…and some dogs…just have that face. The face of a million hidden smiles waiting to emerge if only we are brave enough to…adopt.

Some decisions are hard, our hearts not feeling big enough to do what we know we should. The logistics are too much to overcome, we tell ourselves. In this instance, I followed my heart: Adoption. Yes. There is no other option. I cannot leave him here. I must not leave him here. Death awaits if he stays…and if he comes home, who knows, perhaps life unimagined?

From the look on her face when I got him out of the car, the Mrs. did not think I would make the decision I did. At that moment, neither did I, perhaps because the decision was made for me…when I saw him. Our gut never fails us; faces never lie.

We named him Atlas. His face never lied, not once.

However, there is no “science” to adoption. Once you adopt, you commit, you assume responsibility.

Embedded in adoption is an expression of grace: unmerited favor extended without cause, unconditional acceptance apart from acts crying out for love. Adoption is endowed with love and acceptance, granted, merely because of the existence of the other. In this case, the life of a creature. This is what it means to love unconditionally. Adoption and love are two sides of the same unconditional coin.

We named him Atlas but before he could embody his name, we had to carry him into the world. He was not well. His problems were legion…but we adopted him; his problems became our problems…

His near kidney failure and purple urine.

His intestinal parasites.

His heartworms discovered compliments of a demonic cough that left bits of lung erupting onto our living room floor.

The dog was a walking death bed. We adopted not merely a liability, but perhaps a burial…Did we bring him home to pull the cover over his head?

Better to die here…than die there…but he proved to be strong as his namesake. He made a full recovery…15 months later. Which is about how much time it took Atlas, born of the Kill Shelter, to fully relax.

Adopting was not easy. From the modest $50 adoption fee, to an immediate $800 in vet bills, what have we done? We Adopted. We saved a life. We took responsibility. He became ours…but more than we realized, and most importantly, we became his.

The power of adoption is obfuscated in its dialectic. In an odd reversal, the chooser becomes chosen…and the chosen extends grace to the chooser.

The human that exerts power over becomes the one lost in the unconditional welcome of the saved pet. Such an act of canine obedience and reflexivity can only be understood under a paradigm of cooperant grace: a correlation between adopting an animal (extending grace) and in return, the dog responding to that grace via his loyalty, fidelity, and felicity…as is only imparted by man’s best friend.

What might that embodied response look like on behalf of an adopted Pit Bull Mix, the most feared and incited breed of all time?

Immediately, on his “gotcha day,” it looked like a puppy that grinned like the Joker when all three of my boys gathered around him for that first picture. He was not there to maul anyone; he was adopted. His smile was his mood ring…and so too were his reactive non-existent eyebrows as well. New house, strange people, strange dogs but somehow…he knew he was safe.

It looked like a big puppy, a nanny dog even, that whenever my little girl would run around the house and end up falling, he would immediately come by her side and sit…ensuring she was ok. Though her falling had moved from clumsy 3-year-old, to gymnastics in the living room 10 year old, Atlas did this until his recent passing. She would see him, notice, and then like two best friends lying on the floor together, turn around, flip on the TV, and watch a cartoon.

It looked like a killer puppy that would let a 3-year-old little girl put a princess peach crown on his head and accessorize with sunglasses.

It looked like a puppy that would follow you as you entered a room, and then stand in the doorway, keeping guard, until you left again.

It looked like a puppy that would get the zoomies, making laps around the couch, bounding with his T-Rex arms and 2 other Boston Terriers in hot pursuit.

It looked like a puppy that would find me on the floor or the couch, and come join me, just to remind me he was mine and I was his.

It looked like a puppy that I could command, with voice or mannerism, to follow one of the kids to bed so he could sleep with them. He always did…and he would stay there all night.

It looked like a puppy that was able to eat dinner beside his dog brother, side by side, without an incident.

It looked like a gator pit mix, a dog that whilst walking him a passerby might ask, “is he friendly?” to which we would reply, “Of course,” and he would stop, let them pet him, while his tail would wag and the grandest joker smile in existence would form across his face…often receiving the compliment “he’s such a good looking dog” then, tilting his head back at me over his left shoulder, his happy eyes would imply “did you hear that dad?”

It looked like a puppy that adopted us…even though we adopted him…and gave us the last, and best portion of loyalty he had.

It looked like a dog, feared by most of America, that really taught us we have nothing to fear. I think I read somewhere…perfect love casts out all fear…

Of course, we had to lay down some boundaries, but he learned them quickly.

Within a week, we taught him not to beg for food, he was house broken, and I give him a bath…without incident.

Leash training took a little longer, it being obvious he was either chained up or loose in a fenced in yard before “escaping” one day. This training established my dominance over him, and he quickly became “my dog,” looking after “my pack” instinctively.

Part of the responsibility inherent in adopting is parenting, establishing norms and boundaries for the new pet. He certainly brought a few bad habits with him, but he quickly unlearned them and adapted.

The only negative habit we found, that was unbreakable without much time and effort, was other animals. He never liked other dogs. I would always walk him with a harness to ensure I could control him. He got better as the years progressed, but his early life of abuse scarred his sociability to strange dogs. We successfully introduced him to the dogs in our house, slowly, and over a few days. There were some tense moments in 2018 but setting the tone for dominance made all the difference whenever we decided to try loose roaming. We had one incident in that first week, during feeding, and honestly, it was our fault not his, but nobody was hurt…It just got a bit noisy. We never made that mistake again…and Atlas, shortly, was able to eat with his dog siblings.

Over time, Atlas adjusted to living with 3 other dogs without any incidents, even taking naps on one another and letting them lick his face.

Which is why it was so hard to lose him a couple weeks ago. He was the dog that changed our perception of what adoption could be; the dog that rewrote the script of “never judge a book by its cover.” Our phones are all filled with cute puppy pictures of him doing cute puppy things, because at heart that is really all he was: a giant puppy, forgetting his size and never caring about his “reputation.”

It is never easy saying goodbye to “man’s best friend.” We have millions of conversations with our dogs…and certainly they have talked back! In their absence, we have given them a voice, a particular tone, that speaks to us when they look at us, run with us, listen to us. Some days there is nothing better than finishing a stressful day cuddled up on the couch with your puppy! Its even science! Good for your well-being to chill with a canine and embrace a furry friend…

But the dialectic will always remain, and perhaps even thicken, if the next time you decide to add to your family you make the decision to adopt.

In the end, the shelter you save from and the discussion your family has about the kind of dog to save will not matter much. You will walk into that Kill Shelter, and you will not know how you do it. You will go in with a plan, prepared, focused, maybe already knowing the dog you want because you saw a picture online…but then it will happen…

…you will see the one.

It will see you…

…and you will know.

And when you bring the puppy home, you will celebrate as if you chose it…but give it a few weeks, couple months, and you will learn what it means to be adopted unconditionally…

…by a dog, you never knew you needed.

Rest in peace Atlas…you were a good boy! We miss you but we are thankful that we got to spend nearly 7 years with you!

We thought we saved you, but everyone here knows…you more than returned the favor.