Assignment 3

Have you ever met someone for the first time and felt like you had known them for years? Have you ever gone someplace and felt like you were SUPPOSED to be there? Ever think it’s more than just concidence?

In September 2005, I was supposed to fly to meet my husband in Texas for a weekend getaway. Hurricane Rita had other things in mind for my schedule. After seeing the devastation and transportation nightmare caused by Hurricane Katrina a month before, I was concerned that I might get TO Dallas but not be able to get back to Charlotte. Although I now know that I would have been able to travel with little problem, it’s a really good thing that I didn’t go.

My dog, Fred- a small sheltie-mix that wandered into my neighborhood about 13 years prior and immediately stole my heart- was definitely getting old. He was about 17-18 years old, didn’t see so well and didn’t hear much at all. Each day when I got home from work, I would have to search for where he was sleeping and I was always afraid that today was the day that he wasn’t going to wake up. He had been my bestest bud and traveling partner since I was in High School and had lived in 9 different places with me. Well, the Saturday morning that Hurricane Rita made landfall, I found him lying in the back yard and he just wouldn’t get up. With tears in my eyes, I scooped him up and took him to the vet. Long story short, he didn’t come home from the vet and I was crushed. I hadn’t lost a pet in a long time, especially one that was “mine”, and had never had to make the decision to put one to sleep. My husband wanted to get another dog right away, but I wasn’t ready.

He kept after me about getting another dog every couple weeks. I was able to hold him off until February, when I conceded to LOOK at dogs at a shelter, but didn’t commit to being willing to GET one. We went to a no-kill shelter, but we both agreed that the right dog just wasn’t there. Whew... dodged a bullet there. Then we went to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal shelter, which isn’t a no-kill shelter. We wandered thru the kennels and stopped in front of a kennel with a mostly Black Lab looking mutt. The tag said he was 5 months old. While all the other dogs would either run away or growl when you’d look at them, this one just parked it there and looked at both of us like “Hey. What’s up?” I was intrigued, but not convinced. After visiting with him for a little while, we decided that he needed to come home with us and we named him Cole.

So what does this have to do with the assignment? Well, after we got Cole, a few things happened that made us scratch our heads. Immediately after bringing him into our home, he walked over to small urn where Fred’s ashes were kept, sniffed them, sat down and “smiled” at us. At the time, I dismissed it as the ashes must have smelled like another dog. But then we noticed some other similarities… Fred used to love to play “sleeve” (he’d tug on my sweatshirt sleeve), something I’ve never seen another dog do, and Cole did the same thing unprompted. They both LOVE to swim and are great travelers. But the icing on the cake was the first time my mother and my sister (neither of whom are very superstitious or anything) met Cole, they both looked at his eyes and said, “I know these eyes. We’ve owned this dog before.” When we looked at the calendar, we realized that Freddie died about the same time Cole was born.

These pictures below were photoshopped to represent the similar portions of the two dogs’ personalities.

(This is hard to see, but I "ghosted" Fred swimming with Cole)

(Both dogs are GREAT travelers)

(The color of Cole's eye is actually Fred's fur... the same color!)