Denis Repp - Looking for Love in all the Dog Places

 

 

So, it was about a year ago that my girlfriend broke up with me. In hindsight, she did the right thing, [audience laughter] but I didn't see it coming. So, it left me off balance for a few weeks. For one thing, when you have a breakup at this time of year, I had already started some Christmas shopping. She had let me know some things she wanted. She wanted a fancy fleece blanket, for example. I already got that. It was in my living room waiting to be wrapped. And now, being who I am, I had already lost my receipt, so I couldn't really return it. [audience laughter] 

 

So, my first inclination was just to actually give a tour and be done with it. I asked my friends at my bar about that, and it was a unanimous response, “Don't you dare give that to her. Find anything else to do with it, but don't give it to her.” So, I didn't. Also, I had been accustomed to going to her house a lot, and helping with the house, and helping with her, and taking people to dance class and helping with homework. And now, I had none of that to do, and so I had a lot of time on my hands. 

 

So, I spent a few weeks doing a lot of nothing, until a friend at work suggested I needed to do something, and I needed to maybe volunteer somewhere. She suggested a dog shelter near my house. Sounded good to me. I like dogs. I certainly had the time, so let's try that. So, I became a dog walker at a shelter near my place. When you do that, you commit to go an hour a week. With the state of my life, I was going five or six days a week, at least an hour a day. Walking several dogs, just walking them, giving them a little break, getting them out of the shelter, exercising them, trying to get them ready to go home with somebody. 

 

Now, at our shelter, the average dog stays there for about 56 days from the time it comes in until someone takes them home. Now, that includes the dogs that come in, runaways, broke off the chain. Their owner comes for them a day or two later. So, at the other end of the spectrum is the hard cases, the guys who have been there for a long time, including a dog named Lake. 

 

All we knew about Lake, was that he was about two years old. He was found at a county park running near a lake, which is how they named him. [audience laughter] And Lake just could not catch a break. He was a gorgeous dog, really very smart, but he had some stranger danger. And so, his first response on seeing a man was to try to attack him. The kind of dog, you look at him, people think he's a pit bull. He's not, but he certainly has some terror in him. He liked women, he liked kids. But a guy would see him or he would see the guy, and he would not get a second look. Because when you're looking to adopt a dog, you don't want your first interaction with a dog to be, the dog's trying to kill me. [audience laughter] So, he never got a second look. 

 

So, Lake was there for weeks and then months and then years. Lake was at that shelter for over two years. Around the time, I started walking, he'd been there a year and a half and I got the same response. The first time he saw me, he was trying to kill me. He got better. A steady stream of treats calmed him down. Eventually, my walking skills got to the point where I was allowed to walk him. We were great. He was one of our favorites. He was everybody's favorite. Everyone who worked there, anyone who knew him, and all the staff, any volunteer who knew him loved this dog and we just wanted to get him home with somebody. Well, you can see where this is going. [audience chuckles] 

 

I was getting toward the end of a long home improvement project. As it was coming toward the end, I decided when it was over, I was ready to take someone home and it was going to be Lake. So, I put my name in and they approved me. Now, there is at the shelter, there's a whiteboard in the office where they put the names of all the dogs that are coming and going. So, we know Opie has a meet and greet next week, and Chance is going home and Iris is at the vet. People just know. And then, the day Lake's name went up there, I'm told that anyone who came into the office cried, including me. 

 

Well, the day came to take him home. It was a big day. A lot of the staff came, volunteers came just to see him off and they all brought their cameras with them. So, there are pictures of Lake walking out of that shelter for the last time and going to his car. There's a picture of him in the backseat of my car in his seat, looking out the window and I swear that dog is smiling. [audience laughter] 

 

There's a picture a short time later in his new yard for the first time by himself. His own yard. Not as big as the yard he left behind at the shelter, but this one's all his. There's another picture of me on one knee with Lake's face in mine, and we're facing away from the camera. He's giving me a big dog hug. With her looking away, so you can't see the tongue bath he's giving me, [audience laughter] and you can't see the tears on my face. Everyone who overlooked him for two years, they're all suckers. [audience laughter] And one more thing, we had the blanket I never gave to my girlfriend. Lake finds it very comfortable. [audience laughter] Thank you.