Why God Gave Us Dogs

My daughter started an Instagram account for our dog recently, @fernandothepup. I thought it was a sweet idea, a way to give her sister who just went to college her Fernando fix. I didn’t realize that dog accounts are actually a big thing on Instagram. Did you know this? She’s had a brand contact her already. This is a dog God did actually send us because I definitely did not seek him out. When God Sends You a Dog One day my youngest said, “Mom, a dog followed me home.” I was more focused on a strange stray dog, I told her, “You’re fine.” Then my tenderhearted middle daughter had to go and check on this stray dog. This was the beginning of the end. She and her friend found him laying on the sidewalk panting in the September Houston heat. She said, “Mom, can we take him to a shelter?” I looked at this black dog that could be any sort of a mix between a boxer, pitbull, and a hound and I thought, “he will be put to sleep if we take him there.” Houston is notorious for abandoned animals and shelters and fosters are overflowing. It is very difficult to get a dog into a no-kill shelter and most of the rest will put them to sleep after three days. If I knew a little more about dogs, I probably would have been able to tell right away that this wasn’t a “lost” dog. I am now fairly certain he was dumped because even in his excursions made during the occasional times he has escaped, he has always stayed close to home. He is not dumb; he knows who feeds him. According to the vet, he was about a year and a half when we took him in. Once he got his energy back, he was very rambunctious, as the vet said, he had “puppy brain.” He would jump on people in excitement, chewed everything up, and was so strong he could pull my girls off their feet when they took him for a walk. I think he got past the point of cute little puppy stage, was too much for someone to handle and so they dumped him, because when we took him in he had scratches all over him, was losing hair in places, and had callouses on his legs where it looked like he had been laying on concrete. But being unaware at the time, we tried to find his owner. As you can tell, no luck. We tried a local foster organization and had very limited interest. Partly due to the fact that during this time I was trying to keep up with graduate school as well as the activities of three girls and I didn’t have the time to spare to spend afternoons sitting at adoption days. Two years later, we still have this dog and now my girls are attached. A Picture of Redemption My youngest named him “Fernando” and my girls play his theme song for him all the time. I gave him the middle name “Sylvester” and I think it suits him. Fernando means “redeemed” and Sylvester means “strong in spirit.” He is a redeemed puppy, brought in from the wilderness. This unwanted dog that most people are afraid of on sight has become an object of love for the entire family. My youngest always says, “Fernando is the best dog, we are so lucky we found him.” I’ll be honest, “lucky” wasn’t how I was feeling when he was chewing up remotes, ripping and detaching couch cushions from the frame from sitting on them, and when I was spending an hour chasing him through the neighborhood after he escaped while we were trying to load up Girl Scout cookies for a booth. But sometimes, God sends us what He knows we need . . . Not what we think we want. Somehow, this dog is part of the plan God has for us. His story is an illustration of redemption. He was lost and now he is found. He was unwanted and now he is loved. He was alone and now he is part of a family. Experiencing the Love of God God illustrates His love and plan for us in many ways: through history, through the cosmos, and, yes, through dogs. As humans, we were made to be in fellowship, with God and with others. But so often we close ourselves off. It may be because we have been hurt, betrayed, or let down by others in the past.