Last night Amina and I were out for our evening walk when we bumped into a former shelter-mate of hers, a sweet Golden Retriever named Jasmine. When my wife and I were first looking at dogs, we visited Friends of Homeless Animals in Northern Virginia and walked and played with quite a few of them. Jasmine was the first one that I really felt like we clicked with. But, we held off on adopting her because we weren’t totally sure and we were headed to New York the following week, so we wanted to wait until after that to make a decision. By the time returned from our trip, Jasmine had been adopted. I was a little bummed, but happy for her that she had found a home; it turned out well because that visit was the day we met Amina and there’s no doubt in my mind now that we were meant for each other. The three of us are so similar in some ways, it’s frightening.

But, it was great to see Jasmine again. She was doing really well and was clearly well loved. It was also a little weird — kind of like being with your wife and bumping into your ex-girlfriend; you hope she’s doing well and it’s good to see her, but there’s that weird two-worlds-colliding thing going on. Jasmine sat by me and was loving the head scratching and Amina only got mildly jealous, so it went well.

Something else I realized is that there seems to be an unspoken bond between people who rescue animals. Shortly after we adopted Amina, she and I were walking and a man asked us about her. When I said she was a rescue, he said, “Thank you. Thank you for doing that.” Turns out he lived with a couple of rescued German Shepherds.

Every so often I visit the FOHA site to see how some of the other dogs are doing. At this point, there aren’t too many names left that I recognize from our visit, but there are a few. JoJo, an older female Rottweiler that totally had my heart the first time I saw her, is still there. I doubt she’ll be adopted because of her age and health issues, but she’s being fostered, so at least she has a nice temporary home. Thankfully, every dog or cat that finds their way to FOHA gets the respect they deserve, even if they aren’t adopted right away.

(I realize this post was all over the place, but that’s what happens when I try and write something over the course of eight hours.)