Article by Make The Days Count Contributor Chris Bennett

Somewhere between Indianapolis and St. Louis on a chilly autumn day a few years back, I received a gift for my family that would unknowingly change all of our lives for the better.  This gift came in the form of a little fur ball that could barely see past the top of the grass.  She was shivering so bad she could barely bark.  It was more like chirp, almost like a chipmunk.  Her eyes made it clear though, she wanted to live.  Who was I to say no?

The day started rough.  I was traveling back to my college in northern Indiana from my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky in a Greyhound bus.  My ‘90 Passat had recently decided to spontaneously combust due to a faulty fuel line.  It was one of those unpreventable college moments where you just have to deal and keep moving forward.  It created a situation in which if I ever wanted to come home and see my girlfriend or any friends, I had to sign up for a four-leg bus trip: Lafayette to Indianapolis, Indianapolis to Louisville and visa versa.  Zero fun.

The best part about Greyhound is that if you are exhausted and have trouble focusing, you can ask any worker exactly what bus is which, despite the fact the city of destination it is in big bold letters in the front of every bus.  Even so … just be sure you should always double check … because I didn’t.  Having no cash and only two checks to my Kentucky bank (Greyhound doesn’t take out of state checks), I found myself on my way to St. Louis via the bus on the left, not the bus on the right, which in hindsight I am sure the baggage handler had pointed.

So here I was, stranded somewhere near Missouri at a random bus stop with no money and a chirping puppy.  I was sitting on the sidewalk with my backpack full of clothes about a mile from the station because I could no longer walk off my frustration.  My bus had long since departed.  I decided the only option was to sneak back on a returning bus in hopes that if I could get to Indianapolis I could somehow make it to Lafayette.

What to do about this pup?  While my head was held low and my hood was up trying to block out the world, she had bounced her way through the grass to sit by my side as if to show me that she too was a lost soul.  She was so full of life that I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her.  I gave her some water and a piece beef jerky (my staple college diet) and she lit up like a Christmas tree.  I guess she felt love for the first time in her infant life and I felt compassion perhaps for the first time in mine.  

We were inseparable from that moment on.

I took off my hooded sweat shirt and put on a less warm long sleeve shirt so I could wrap her up.  If we were going to sneak on a bus she couldn’t make any noise, and she didn’t.  After a sleepless night in downtown Indianapolis, I traded a ride to campus for an extra pair of tickets to the Notre Dame football game against Purdue.  It was a tough call, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

The best part about raising a puppy in a college dorm is that you make friends real fast, especially with the girls over in vet school.  Needless to say, my pup got her appropriate shots and had scheduled sitters from day one.

When Christmas came, I decided it was time to tell my family about the pup.  Boomer, as I named her, now lives in the mountains of Utah with my parents and enjoys an adventurous life.  Her life has meaning as she has become the object of my family’s affection as I left the nest and my other dog, an old boxer of thirteen years, passed away.  

While I have been writing about Boomer, my first thought is of Boomer being my gift of loyalty and love to my parents who showed me so much of both while I was growing up.  But on second thought, we are all wonderful gifts to one another … to Boomer, to my parents and to me … altogether we are a family taking care of each other.

“And the fox said to the little prince: men have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

-Antoine De Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

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