It started with a dog...

Life has many chapters. My life may have volumes...let's call it the encyclopedia of G. This one started with a dog.

Starting life all over again, I decided to do something I wanted to do. My whole life all I wanted was a dog. I had a couple of dogs, family dogs...you've read stories of Lucky, the wonder dog and Rocky, my first dog who was the best friend I always needed. Rocky was my protector, sometimes literally, breaking his choke collar to chase a bully down the street. Both knew everything about me. But I always wanted to save a life and I knew that saving a life of a dog who needed it would be worthwhile...an amazing thing. So I did my research and it turned out that middle aged dogs with black fur were the least adopted.

I met a few, but when the foster dogs came to my home, there was this little, polite girl. She was completely scabbed and scarred on one side. No one could say why, because she was a stray from a high kill shelter in NC. Best guesses include she was attacked by another dog or hit by a car. She was too timid to come to the Saturday petsmart outings. The foster mom said she thought we would be perfect together because I worked from home and she didn't like to be alone. All she wanted was to be loved.

It sounded familiar. It sounded like me. Her sad brown eyes told me she had a story to tell and that was about all it took.

Nothing scared me more than when everyone left the house and it was just the two of us. Would she be ok? Would she totally hate me? Would she realize that I was a complete goofball and be embarrassed?

Turned out, I gave her a home, she gave me her ear. Well, truth be told, she took the whole home and managed to leave me a sliver of my bed and sometimes I get to sit on my couch.

So where did my "new life" begin? It began with this furball that became my world. She chose not to eat, and it was a state of emergency...she didn't like noises, and all cell phones went to vibrate.

She's worth it all though because when I least expect it she does something goofy to remind me that life is so much more than I think it is. Never ending conference call? She rolls around in the grass, wagging her tail to remind me that work is just a job. Sick from my endo? She lays down on top of my belly to replace my heating pad.

So here we were...two lost girls making our way, figuring we would do it the same way we always did, on our own. What we never expected is that someone else would come along that would quickly make our house into a home.