I went to the pound today. I’m not actually looking to get a new dog yet, just kind of spending some time there to see if it starts to feel right to bring one home.

I met this little guy, his name was Bozo. Something about the way he approached me when I went to look in his cage stood out to me. Sort of like we had an understanding. I know, I know, it’s just a dog. With everything that has happened lately, though, I’ve found myself more alone than ever before. I simply don’t have as many good friends as I used to, and without my dog, my best friend, here to tell everything to, I haven’t felt connected to anyone, or anything.

Part of it was the timing. I just applied to graduate from my junior college, I just applied to a university four hours from home, and I’d just returned from a trip to that university the week he died. All of these feelings about growing up and leaving home weren’t settling well and then this dog I’d had, since I was eight years old, was just suddenly gone with so little warning. Every last piece of my childhood was being taken from me.

Alone really doesn’t describe it. Nothing described how I felt until I held this little dog. He was so eager, so sweet and loving, but he had no one, nothing. He was just this little man in a little cage waiting for good news. I held him, and I felt a connection to something living. A connection I’d been looking for so desperately.

That’s what I was, that’s what I am - a stray, waiting for good news.