What happens when two second chances meet?
A puppy named Iggy was born in a Dallas, Texas, shelter that was overrun before the ice storm of 2013 hit. He had three siblings, and the four of them were part of the largest flight of dogs to ever land at John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was all over the news in Dallas and New York. I didn't see it on TV, but my heart felt him coming.
I had been thinking of getting another dog, and by "another," I mean the first one in more than twenty years. I gave my last dog up to a family with a farm when apartment living and a new baby rocked Bonnie Blue's world so much, she acted up like some spaniels will and snapped at my newly crawling son. Being a (mostly) single working mom, I never felt like I could do justice to a pet dog.
So, on the morning of Christmas Eve 2013, I woke up and checked my e-mail. There was a message from ARF, our local rescue shelter, with a list of all the new dogs up for adoption that day. This one dog, Atom, had a blurry picture—he was too wiggly to pose—and at only eight weeks old, weighed just five pounds. I deleted the e-mail.
Two hours later, I stood in my son's bedroom doorway.
"Um," I said, and he looked up from his game. "I think I found my dog."
We went off to ARF, which opened just as we got there, and asked to see the litter. They were all so cute, but I knew Atom (his pre-Iggy birth name) right away. As soon as I held him, he was mine; we both knew it. His happy face and bright brown eyes and round little belly were adorable, of course, but there was something else. We were a team from the moment we met.
—KIM
