So About My Dog…

In 2005, I decided to move from San Francisco to Portland for a lot of reasons, loneliness being one of them. Portland felt smaller, slower, friendlier. I envisioned myself living in a little house with a yard and getting a dog who would take long walks with me in the gloomy Oregon rain. Surely I could live happily ever after there?

And so in between the online hours devoted to job-hunting and burrito-finding in my new city, it was dog-searching time. The Oregon Humane Society (OHS) was my favorite bookmark. I looked at the photos and profiles of each and every dog on the site—every day, sometimes several times a day. Whenever my new neighbor came by and found me mooning over the dogs, he said, “Oh geez, she’s looking at her doggie porn again.”

“But look at this one!” I pointed at my computer screen. He was an older dog, a chow chow mix with a giant, goofy head that made me laugh. His profile was equally captivating: “Leo has a big personality. He is fun loving and comical, but definitely likes things on his own terms. We expect him to bond closely with his person and be a great friend. He'll also give lots of kisses.”

I was smitten.

But also unemployed. With my savings rapidly depleting, I was afraid to get a dog until I had a job. So my long days spent trolling the Internet (and visiting Leo’s profile) continued. October rolled into November rolled into December and my online visits to Leo began to be filled with dread: would he still be there? Would someone else adopt him before I could?

On January 4, 2006, my phone rang: I was offered a job. And the next moment I was in the car, speeding to the Oregon Humane Society.

When I found Leo, he was sleeping. His back was pressed to the front of the kennel, black fur sticking out between the bars. Unlike the other dogs who rushed to greet me as I walked by, full of showmanship for the prospective adopter, Leo just snored.

I sat down beside him, afraid to touch him in his sleep, and glanced up to see a sign on his kennel: “I survived the Louisiana Flood Waters. I am a dog that has been brought from the South as part of the Hurricane Katrina pet rescue.”

I had heard that OHS was rescuing dogs from New Orleans and bringing them to Portland to find new homes for them. Yet until that moment, I didn’t know that Leo was one of those dogs. Suddenly it felt like so many tiny, interconnecting threads had brought me and this old dog together.

Leo was from New Orleans; I had lived in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina brought Leo to Portland; I moved to Portland on the very day that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. I first heard of the Internet’s existence when I lived in New Orleans; it was on the Internet that I found Leo. His name is Leo; my astrological sign is Leo....

...admittedly I got a little crazy with this “interconnectedness” thing. But as I sat there next to this dog and contemplated all the quiet decisions and momentous events that had led to our paths crossing in this place at this time, I felt like we were part of a grand web.

And I knew, with absolute certainty, that I had found my rainy weather walking companion.