When I first met Maggie, she didn’t look up at me. There was no spark, no magic between us. She was not interested in going through the motions yet again to be abandoned to her fate.

Left in the last kennel in the very back of the shelter with the lights turned out, she was not meant to be seen. There was no care clipboard, no sharpie-drawn hearts and dog bones. No colorful leashes hung on the hook over her door. Standing there, she had no name – a stark contrast to even all the other now empty kennels that weren’t the last place so many dogs would ever see.

She did not stir when I approached.

When I was at one of the lowest points of my life, since misery loves company, I took myself to the animal shelter to be with society’s other castoffs. As it was with my luck in those days, I arrived at an empty and silent shelter that had amazingly adopted off all of the dogs they had for the weekend. What most of the staff didn’t know was that one of their dogs had been returned, having failed her fifth adoption by three different groups.

The shelter labeled her unsuitable for adoption and put her and all the torturous scars that marred her body in the kennel next to the unmarked door at the back of the facility. I was about as close to death myself, so I told them I’d take her home. I didn’t have much hope to spare and I often wondered if I wasn’t just cruelly extending her short and terrible life that had so far been absent the kind of love that only a person that won’t give you up can provide a dog.

So I asked her to try again just one more time. Take the risk on a broken old man on his hands and knees. See just one more time for ourselves what fool’s fate has in store for the both of us. I don’t believe she understood what I was asking, but she got up off the concrete floor anyway.