There's a photo on my phone from late September 2021: a skinny yellow dog standing in a stranger's kitchen in Anoka, ears up, tail low, ribs showing under a coat that hadn't quite figured out what color it wanted to be. That was the first time I saw Hank in person. He looked a little like a golden retriever someone had drawn from memory.
This month, by our best estimate, he turns five. It feels like the right time to write down how he got here.
A van ride north
Hank started out in an overfull shelter in Oklahoma. We don't know much about his life before that, only that he was about a year and a half old and had been picked up as a stray. A foster-based rescue here in the Twin Cities pulled him, and he rode north on a transport van with a lot of other dogs, a long overnight drive in a crate. I'm not naming the rescue, partly because I keep my own clinic out of this blog too, but I think about those volunteers more than they know.
He landed with a foster family in Anoka who had two kids, an old beagle and endless patience. They fed him up, taught him that the kitchen trash is not a buffet (mostly) and found out he was terrified of thunder. They posted his profile with a photo of him on their back step, head tilted.
At the time, Caleb and I were renting a duplex in Coon Rapids, and I was working as client-care lead at a clinic there. I'd wanted a dog for years. Caleb grew up near Braham with barn cats that weren't allowed in the house, and he described himself as "not really a pet person," which in hindsight was the funniest thing he's ever said.
The meet-and-greet
We drove to Anoka on a Saturday afternoon. I'd prepared a list of questions. Caleb had prepared nothing and stood in the foster's backyard with his hands in his jacket pockets.
Hank looked at me, sniffed my shoes politely and walked straight to Caleb. He leaned his whole weight against Caleb's shins and then sat down on his boot. He didn't jump, didn't bark, didn't pull. He just sat on Caleb's foot and looked up at him. Caleb looked down and said, "Well." The foster mom laughed. I put away my list.
We signed the adoption papers and brought him home on October 2, 2021, which is still the day we celebrate more than his estimated birthday.
The first months
Mabel was four and a half and not consulted. We kept them apart with a baby gate for a week, and on day three she swatted him on the nose, no claws, and that settled the rules permanently.
He was skinny enough that you could count his ribs, and it took most of a year for him to fill out to the 68 pounds he is now. He was polite, food-motivated and fascinated by squirrels. The first thunderstorm that fall, we found him wedged behind the toilet in the duplex bathroom, shaking. Storms and fireworks are still hard for him, and I'll write about how we handle them.
The following August we bought this house in Cambridge, with a fenced backyard and a maple tree full of squirrels, and I'm fairly sure Hank thinks we bought it for him.
About that sofa
In the duplex we had a hand-me-down brown loveseat, and Hank was not allowed on it. That rule held. When we finally bought a real sofa in October 2023 (a gray performance-fabric one, $1,150 on sale from $1,499), we said the rule would carry over.
It lasted about two weeks. Caleb was the first to break, of course. I came home from work and found the two of them on the new sofa, Caleb watching the game and Hank asleep with his head on Caleb's knee. Caleb said, "He was cold." The radiator was going full blast.
So now there's a washable blanket on one end, and that end belongs to Hank. Right now he's on it, chin on the armrest, watching the bare maple for squirrels and twitching his eyebrows every time a branch moves. The skinny transport dog is a solid, slightly spoiled mutt with a sofa of his own, and I wouldn't trade a single muddy paw print to have it any other way.
