Why We Read Fiction

This past weekend, we adopted a dog from the SPCA of Delaware. The dog has a beautiful lab head but a narrow body, possibly greyhound. When we viewed her in the pen at the shelter, we saw that she had a problem with her right rear leg. She was also suffering hair loss from a flea allergy. She’d been picked up in the city of Wilmington as a stray.

We were told not to call a dog by its shelter name (Sallie, in this case), which may have bad associations for the animal, so we renamed her Cue — short for Rescue. What exactly we rescued her from we’ll never know, but it wasn’t good.

At some point this dog seems to have had a normal life. While exuberant, she obeys basic commands, is properly house trained, and aims to please. But at some later point, it all went to hell for her.