Nick asked me, "Why did you pick that one?"

"Well..." I started to say and looked down beside me on the chair at my choice. I guess I had to think about that.

Because when I went in I wasn't planning on picking anything. I just wanted to see what was there, maybe get a little critter fix... and I suppose it's nice of us to, you know, visit the lonely and abandoned. We do that sometimes; the kids seem to get a lot out of it.

So, when we got there and we signed in as visitors, Steven and Lea went to the part of the building where the kittens are housed, and I moseyed over to the dogs. Feeling pretty emotional already from my after-vacation blues, I could hardly hold back my.. whatever pulsates behind my eyeballs when I walk in there, the same thing probably that constricts my throat and I have to bargain with it not to break. I can't help it, really; heartsick canines are almost too much to take, especially at a shelter when their numbers are just too many and all hopeful eyes are on one thing -you- to get them out of the mess they're in.

And oh my god, the barking that day was ungodly loud. The highpitched ones are the worst, but the big ones guard-dogging what little territory they'd been offered and blasting their deep, ominous WORLF.... well, deafening is not the word, because deafness, I half-imagined, would be a strange blessing because it's truly painful to hear through the noise in an enclosed space like that. I covered one ear with my hand and tried quieting a few of those yelping too close to my almost-bursting, exposed drum with, "Shhhhhh...hush now babies..." I scrunched my shoulder to my other one to try to deflect some of it, and reached over to get a leash from the hangers just inside the door.

It happened that the door I came through which opened to the cacophony of the caged, placed me in front of one cell and the dog in it wasn't barking, but saw me, looked and then kind of lazily stumbled off her cot and walked over to the gate of her space to get closer to me. She wasn't hesitant, she wasn't pushy either, but she sat leaning against the chainlink as close as she could get to me when I squatted down to put my two fingers inbetween the holes to scritch-scritch the knit of her brow. The brown eyes gloomy, but encouraged,.... yeah, you know what I mean.

At first the barks and howls were decibals above anything my current ears are used to but once I was crouched and out of their sight, the forsaken assortment of big and little; brown, white or black; pointy and squashed faces were discouraged and piped down just a bit. I then heard the smallest sound coming from the creature with the sad eyes beside me; she whined, but not pleading, a question maybe... So, I opened her cage, put the leash on her to take her for a walk outside. And I went back the next day and I brought her home with me.

Nick said, "You're just a softy."

Slightly turning my head to him while petting her smooth noggin, sound asleep against my leg, "No, not really," I said. "It's because... I think she asked me."