3 steps to making your dog dreams come true

We got our only family dog when I was in sixth grade. It wasn’t a unanimous decision, and it wasn’t an easy feat to execute; I put years of diligent planning into the moment we found her. It worked out better than I had hoped, and, ultimately, she made the final stage of the plan seamless.

We walked through the doors of the humane society days after Christmas and made our way into the crowded corridor of dogs behind chain-link fences and concrete slabs separating their stalls. I walked up the right side and down the left, my eyes wide. I was fascinated and startled by the sight, overwhelmed by the noises.

Dogs were jumping and barking. I heard the clashing of claws on the fence and the gnashing of teeth against it, too.  None of this was vicious though, mostly pure excitement in hopes of being chosen. My parents halted at one of the stalls, hunching over in admiration. This could be it.

Adding a dog to a family is a process. In my experience, I found three steps to effectively acquiring a family dog. The divine scheme began when I was eight years old.

1.     Consistency

When I was in third grade, I wrote about a dog called Lucky. Lucky wasn’t real; it was a book of pieces of printer paper stapled together, written haphazardly from an 8-year-old mind. The title was “Lucky: the Unlucky Dog.” Not surprisingly, the book was about a dog named Lucky, but everything that happened to him was not. Lucky got lost; he turned loose from his collar, tripped into a mud puddle, and was desperate to find his home again. When Lucky befriended a street puppy, the two went on a neighborhood journey. Facing one obstacle after another, they made it back to Lucky’s house. By a turn of events that some would call luck, Lucky’s owners adopted the stray puppy, too.  “Lucky: the Unlucky Dog” was inspired by Homeward Bound, Oliver & Company, and above all, my obsession with dogs. This was phase one of the master plan, and was only the beginning.

A year later, and a year wiser, I wrote a research paper about the Labrador Retriever breed. It wasn’t an assignment, but something I chose to do for fun. In the fifth grade, I wrote an opening to a book inspired by Where the Red Fern Grows and Sounder, about a loyal coonhound named Rosco.

Somewhere in between writing about dogs, I experimented in my entrepreneurial expertise. I created business cards offering dog-walking services. Mom supported my efforts and showed it. She laminated and passed them out to her friends. I kept the cards in an old checkbook cover; one of those items that either gets thrown out or given to a young nine-year-old who finds anything to be treasure and somehow fit for use.

2.     Tenacity

I decided to take more deliberate points of action. Passively writing about breeds was not enough. I had to be strategic and stubborn. Don’t back down, I’d tell myself. Don’t let up.  I started by adding “puppy” to the end of my Christmas list five Decembers in a row. I made sure it stood out on the page with exclamation points and stars wrapping around the word “PUPPY,” which took up at least two lines of space.

My sister and I soon became allies and business partners. We signed a contract promising to take full responsibility should we succeed in gaining a family dog. Yes, this dog would be for every member in our family, respectively, but the responsibility over the feeding schedule, the walking, grooming, training, my sister and I would take care of. Our family would reap the benefits of having a dog, without the dirty work. We presented to our parents, prepared to answer any questions and dismiss any reasonable doubt our clients might have.

Over the years, the drafting of plans never deemed successful, but consistency and tenacity led me to the last plea of execution.  

3.     Execution

In January of 2006, a hardened sixth grader, I leveled with my parents.

“If we can’t get a dog, can we please go to the Humane Society just to see them?”

I was desperate. They agreed.

We visited a few days after Christmas, which was good enough for me. I didn’t plan for what happened next; it was divine happenstance if it can be a combination of the two.  

Then began our excursion into the great humane society of southern Arizona.

A black Labrador puppy captivated my attention. The aesthetic pleased my naïveté, but I realized I must have missed the greatest prize there because my parents were captivated by something else.  I huddled over their shoulders to see what they saw: a quiet, timid, mixed breed. She sat close to the fence; close enough to touch her nose through it, which was surprisingly and sadly dry. Her ears were pinned back, and she looked scared in the sweetest way. The rest of the dogs were jumping and barking; she seemed different from the rest. She didn’t beg for attention. In fact, her lack of wanting attention is what drew us the most. Her character spoke for itself. She was composed and mature for her age.

She was a mixed breed, the definition of a mutt. She was five months old but looked adult in size. She seemed boring for a young girl who had worked her entire life to get the perfect puppy, but I’m relieved parents know best.

My parents fell in love with this understated mixed-breed, and I did, too. I couldn’t believe going to the humane society “just to look” actually worked. I didn’t mean for it to, but it did.

We adopted her the next day, and decided to call her Tatum. My sister and I stayed up for hours debating over the perfect name. We compared and contrasted lists and communally decided. Our parents liked it, and our brothers didn’t really care, so Tatum was her name.

Tatum was everything we wanted and more. She was quiet and low maintenance, but a guard dog when she needed to be. She was excited to go on walks, but never begged for food. She followed my dad loyally without being restricted to a leash. God knew we needed Tatum. She was the perfect balance of everything, even her breeds. Tatum’s face looked like the shape and color of the honey-gold retriever she had in her, her body’s coat was dark and coarse like her shepherd blood, her paws were like socks; white and speckled, mimicking the Heeler she had, and her shape: a large torso and a thin waist proved her Greyhound. Growing up in Arizona, we always joked that she was “our little coyote.”

Tatum was a loyal addition to our family for twelve years. My dog dreams came true when I was twelve and she was my companion until I turned twenty-four. She was our one and only family dog, and she was perfect.

I’m a believer that all dogs go to heaven and all dogs make dreams come true.