I'm pretty sure Petey's early life was spent with some drunk ass who drove a beat up truck, cursed a lot,  and was abusive toward dogs. I don't know what the asshat called Petey.  I'm not so sure it matters. What matters is that somehow Petey managed to escape and eventually found himself in an animal shelter. 

He spent enough time at the animal shelter that he eventually ended up on death row. It's hard to believe such an amazing spirit would spend so much of his young life being rejected by humans. But that's how it went until an agency involved in rescuing good animals in bad situations stepped in to save him. 

The next chapter of his life found him at a foster home where he got to hang out with a couple of other dogs and some children who decided to call him Pumpkinhead. Those kids must have really loved him to come up with a name like that. He spent lots of time outdoors chasing a big ball around the grounds, living a much happier dogs life than what he'd previously lived.  I think he lived there for two or three months. Long enough that by the time Mrs. SS saw the ad and contacted the woman fostering him, she knew a lot about who he was and how he behaved. 

A year or so earlier Mrs. SS told me she wanted a dog. I've always gotten along well with dogs, and I've been lucky enough to spend time with some really good one's. But life was more complicated now, so I was a bit reluctant. After giving it some thought, I agreed that we could get a dog. Mrs. SS had shared a dog with her previous boyfriend that had really won her over. I knew this dog. She was a beautiful 35 pound female mutt, with brown hair and golden eyes.  It wasn't long before a dog showed up that was the spitting image of this dog. The new dog, Kona, had been adopted by a young couple a month or so earlier. They told Mrs. SS everything she wanted to hear about the dog, none of which was true. After a long weekend with Kona it was obvious that she wasn't the dog we were told she was. I knew Mrs. SS felt obligated to save her, but I reminded her that we can't save every dog, and that saving this one would present a greater challenge than we were likely prepared for. I told her it was okay to take Kona back. So that's what she did. Mrs. SS eventually thanked me, both for letting her bring a dog home, and for telling her it was okay to take Kona back. She also said she'd learned her lesson, and that maybe she didn't want a dog after all. 

A year passed before she approached me again about a dog. This time I told her yes, but that the dog needed to meet some requirements before she brought her home. She needed to be a dog that didn't bark, didn't dig, was house trained, and was eager to please. She also needed to be a 30-40 pound female. It wasn't long before she'd found a new candidate. The dog met all the criteria but two. He was a 70 pound male. I told Mrs. SS that all the other requirements were more important and harder to come by, and that if he were really all these things, most importantly eager to please,  I was willing to give him a try. 

So she brought him home. 

I still have a mental image of the first time I saw him. A skinny boy, standing up in the back of the car as Mrs. SS did her usual u-turn in front of our old house. He looked nervous. He didn't yet know that in his new life he'd travel to 7 national parks. He didn't know he'd swim in the Pacific Ocean and hike at 10,000 feet in the La Sal Mountains of Utah. He didn't know he'd chase sticks into waves ten times his size in the Columbia River. He didn't know he'd earn the stamina to run with us on 25 mile mountain bike rides. He didn't know he'd travel to 9 different states, mountain biking in 7 of them. He didn't know that he'd be given the name Petey, which I think was probably his real name all along. He didn't know he'd form an eternal bond with a particular human who will love him forever. 

Nor did I.