I was having lunch with my friend Mary when I told her about my fruitless quest for a new puppy. Daisy, my beloved canine companion of 16 years, had died. Now I was finally ready for a new dog. I wanted a small female like Daisy, but none of the kennels and shelters I visited had what I was looking for. “I just can’t find a puppy that’s right,” I announced. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Kati,” Mary said, “you need to turn this over to God.”
As soon as I got home I did as she suggested. “Please, Lord, send a puppy just for me,” I prayed.
A month went by, and I continued my pursuit. Then one day I visited a shelter I had never been to. After looking at rows and rows of puppies, one cage in the last building caught my eye. Inside was a mother with three tiny squirming creatures. I picked one up and it snuggled in my hand. I was in love. The puppy was male and, judging from his mother, would be over 20 pounds full grown—nothing like what I had been looking for—but I knew without a doubt that he was meant to be mine.
“I have to see if he’s old enough to be separated from his mother,” the woman at the front desk explained when I told her I wanted to adopt the puppy. She looked at his records and said, “You’re in luck. He was born August 16th, so he’s just old enough to take.”
That date sounded familiar. Later, when I pulled out my scheduler I knew why. Sure enough, there was a notation on my puppy’s birthday: “Lunch with Mary.”
