Every dog story begins somewhere. Ours began on an ordinary evening around 2010, when I was in eighth grade.
We were living in Philadelphia then. My younger brothers wanted a dog more than anything in the world, but it never felt like something that could really happen. My mom was afraid of dogs, truly afraid, so none of us ever seriously thought about bringing one home.
That evening, my dad didn’t come home at his usual time. It kept getting later and later. When I asked my mom where he was, she said she didn’t know. So we just waited.
And then I heard my mom scream.
I ran downstairs to see what was happening, and there he was. A little white puppy, standing in our house, looking right up at me and wagging his tail.
That was the first time I met Jake.
He came to us from a family in Baltimore, Maryland. They were moving to Texas and couldn’t keep him anymore. He was six months old, a white Schnauzer of about 12 pounds, and he already had a name. His first family had called him Jake, and the name stayed with him.
His fur was white, but the skin underneath was gray, so in some photos he looks almost silver.
My brothers were over the moon. They held him close and hugged him tight, as if they had been waiting their whole lives for that moment. In a way, they had.
My mom, meanwhile, was standing on top of the dining table.
She was that scared. There she was, up on the table, while a 12-pound puppy stood in the middle of our house. The dog my brothers had dreamed of and my mom’s biggest fear had walked through our door at the very same moment.
That night was only the beginning. I didn’t know yet how much that little white puppy, wagging his tail at me, would come to mean to our family.
To be continued.