As soon as she walked through the entrance of the shelter for the second time that week, Olivia was swept away with the feeling that she was right where she was supposed to be. A senior-aged, stout-looking dog—a cairn terrier, she thought—sauntered over from where he’d been lapping up water from a stainless-steel bowl. Olivia knelt, letting him sniff her hands and jeans, and his tail wagged back and forth like a metronome.

He had tan, wiry hair and cloudy gray eyes, cloudy enough that she wondered if he had a hard time seeing.

Tess, one of the staff members that Olivia had met last time, wandered over. She seemed to be about Olivia’s age, had long, dark-brown hair, and from what Olivia had seen last time, somehow radiated the perfect amount of peppiness without being over-the-top. “Hey, Olivia, welcome back! Did you get to meet Chance last time?”

“No, I didn’t. He’s a cutie though.”

“He’s one of our permanent residents. It’s just him and Trina, a cat, who are intentional lifers here.” She craned to look over by the kenneled cats at the back of the room. “I bet she’s napping in back on top of the fridge in the break room. She’s either there or sprawled out in front of the cats, flaunting her freedom.”

Olivia laughed. “I was wondering why this guy was walking around freely like this.”

“Chance gets full roam of the place during the day, but he’s typically kenneled at night. He almost always hangs out in the front room, and he tells us when he wants to go outside. He’s ten now and sleeps in later than he used to.”

“That explains why I didn’t meet him last time.”

Chance clambered up, bracing his front paws on her knee, and stretched to sniff her face. Olivia tipped forward to give him easier access. “What a sweetie.”

“You’ve definitely passed the Chance test. We think maybe it has something to do with him being blind, but he’s great at reading people’s energy. Maybe it just comes down to him being able to tell a dog lover, or he interprets the smells people carry, or both, but we take his responses to potential adopters seriously. When someone really sets him off, which is rarely, we almost always set up a home visit.”

“Huh. That’s cool. Like a doggie lie-detector, I guess.”

Apparently finished with his greeting, Chance plopped his front paws heavily back to the floor and sauntered around one of the adoption desks and over to a cushy bed near the gift shop.

“He’s totally blind?” Olivia asked as she stood up.

“He may be able to see some shadows, but he’s memorized where everything is.”

“That’s impressive.”