Seeing the Place You Came From

I spotted our dog, Louie, while volunteering at the Humane Society in Boulder, Colorado.

Or it seemed he spotted me while I was making a grand sweep through the back room where newly arrived dogs are kept for a few days before they move to the public spaces where they can be adopted.

He’d come in on a van with thirty dogs from Bartlesville, Oklahoma. These Pet Smart sponsored vans go to over - crowded shelters in low population states and bring dogs back to Boulder ( and three other locations in the U.S. ) for adoption.

So there he was -- coming from Oklahoma to Colorado, picked up as a stray in Bartlesville - and with body language and personality, telling me, “ I’m the one you’re looking for.....take me.”

“But I’m not looking for a dog,” I told him. We had just lost Fundy and I was grieving deeply. Still, he danced, and flipped over, flapping his paws and pan handling me for belly rubs.

Our granddaughter Ava was volunteering in the next room. “Come and see this dog,” I said to her.

She took one look at all his corgi and cairn terrier cuteness and said, “Oh Grandma, that’s your dog. That’s YOUR dog.”

And so he left Colorado and moved to the Arizona desert with us, and thrived.

When it was time to return to Nova Scotia, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, was directly en route to friends we were going to visit. I was curious to see this place where Louie had come from.

Over the years, Bartlesville had given us two significant gifts. When Bud was in graduate school, Phillips Petroleum (then known as Phillips 66 and headquartered in Bartlesville} gave him a lucrative scholarship..... and now Bartlesville had given us Louie.

We arrived in the city in the late afternoon and set out to find the shelter. In spite of our GPS, we got lost and had to phone for directions.

“We’re closing in four minutes,” the director told us when we said we were having difficulty. “Oh, that’s o.k.,” I said. “We adopted one of your dogs in Boulder and we just wanted to see where he came from.”

“You want to see where your dog came from?”

“Yes, we just wanted to see where he came from,” I told her.

“We’ll stay open and wait for you,” she said. And when we arrived a few minutes later,

she and a co-worker were there at the door and the local animal control officer drove in at the same time.

“That dog looks familiar,” he said, and when he heard Louie’s story he said he was sure he’d picked him up as a stray.

Babs, the director, took our pictures ( that’s the animal control guy on the left ), Louie went back to the car, and we were given a grand tour of the place. Especially meaningful was seeing the group of dogs waiting to be driven to Boulder the next week.

So that’s Louie’s story. Babs emailed us the picture she took and Louie will be sending an annual contribution to the Washington County Animal Shelter, along with his regular gift to the Boulder Humane Society.

It’s always important to recognize your roots and honor the people who have helped you along the way.