“I’m Jillian and this is Adam.”

Jillian was embarrassed because her hands were sweaty, she was so excited, but she had to shake this woman’s hand. If I pretend it’s not sweaty, then it won’t seem so sweaty, she thought.

Adam said hello but his attention was on the tv and the collection of videos underneath it. He didn’t recognize any of the titles, but he studied them anyway. He imagined the woman might invite him to watch a video and give him a sandwich, because most women wanted to do things like that for him.

“Let’s go out to the run,” said Emily.

Jillian’s heart was pounding, she couldn’t calm down. Who is this woman, what am I doing here? Ok, calm down, you know, it’ll be great.

The back door was off the kitchen. Jillian could see it from the living room because there was an open wall above one of the kitchen counters. They walked through the kitchen, which had several bowls of dog food and water on the floor on children’s place mats. The lower cabinets were held shut by rubber bands wrapped around the knobs. There was a loaf of bread on the counter. Emily opened the back door, turned and smiled at them and said, “This way.”

The back yard was nice and big and there were a few trees and a fence around the perimeter. It took a second to see where the dogs were. I guess this is what their natural camouflage is like, thought Jillian, noticing how the chocolate labs blended into the shaded dirt under the trees and how the yellow labs blended into the wood on the fence. A few white and brown spotted dogs, that Jillian thought looked like English hunting dogs, walked around with toys in their mouths. “Oh, those look like Fancy Pants,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Emily. “Which one do you want to meet?”

“Adam?”

“Choco,” said Adam. He pointed to the brown labs under the tree.

“I guess we want to meet those chocolate labs,” said Jillian. Emily led them back to the tree and explained that, at least during the good weather seasons, it was better for the dogs to stay in a house with a yard.

“You know, better for them mentally. My house doesn’t always look like this. I usually have nice hostas along that fence,” she said, pointing to a dug-up spot along the fence.

“This is a really great thing you do,” said Jillian.

Adam crouched in the shade by the labs, who were initially indifferent to him.

“They don’t bite, do they?”

“Not as far as I know. I think they’re pretty kid-friendly.”

“Hi, Choco,” said Adam. Choco raised her head. Adam crouch-walked closer to the dogs while the women talked about the rescue center.

“You’re Choco and you’re Crispy. Hi, Crispy. Hi, Choco the dog,” he said. Crispy got up, wagged her tail, and walked up to Adam and began to sniff his crotch. “Hi Crispy,” he whispered.