Zander is the sweetest puppy. I went home two weekends after my mom adopted him so that I could meet the puppy. I began to understand how deep his roots went when we were in the car together. Wrapped up in a brown-and-red striped blanket, he sat shivering in my lap. His paws stretched out desperately to hold onto my shoulders, and his body was turned toward me so he could see nothing else. His tiny body trembled so hard, and his mouth became a fountain of drool—I could physically feel his fear of the world. I didn't know how to help him, though, besides holding and talking to him and petting him because I didn’t know what he had actually been through before he came to us.

 I do know that I also shake in moments when I am genuinely terrified. I also know that when I walked in the front door and met him for the first time, he was immediately in my lap licking my face. But when he met my father, he was shaking. I remembered that when my best friend adopted her own dog, the dog was terrified of men. Zander is a rescue puppy. He came off a truck from Texas (over a 36-hour journey away) and was immediately handed to my mom, trembling, about a week ago. Zander was on this truck because, in the south, many shelters are kill shelters—if an animal does not get adopted soon enough, they get euthanized. According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, every year around 920,000 animals are euthanized in kill shelters In the United States. So, there is a woman (I am sure there are many) who takes as many puppies north as she can and places them in homes. Zander was just eight weeks old when he came to us, and he had already experienced trauma. Will he form a new foundation here? Or will he always be scared?

In our home, now, Zander is not scared. He very quickly claimed the orange chair as his own. Over the weekend, at night, he has been lying on my bed while each of us begins to doze off, and then my mom scoops him up to sleep in his own bed in case he has an accident. Zander and I have known each other for four days, and he is my puppy.

There are moments  when I think that maybe, eventually, Zander’s life before us won't matter, and that we will become his roots. We walk through the woods by my house, but to get there, we have to cross a bridge. It is a short bridge, a three-minute walk, but it is very busy. There are cars and people everywhere, and Zander hates it. His little body shakes the length of the bridge, and we almost trip because he stays so close to our feet (even my dad’s, whom he now trusts). The moment we arrive at the woods, though, his leash comes off, and he confidently waddles through the trees. He bounces to the other dogs he sees and occasionally allows strangers, primarily women, to say hello.

Zander is crossing a bridge right now to meet us, and I hope he is able to overcome his hard beginning and bounce through life with us, creating new, sturdy roots.