Although I had dogs as a child, I never had one until I met Sasha, a Project POOCH dog. She was a German shepherd mix turned into the Humane Society by her family. She sat in her kennel with her back to visitors, but I wanted to look at her anyway.

The boys were all smiling when I brought her back to campus. She was easy to train and liked the walks around campus; however, she escaped one day when she saw a squirrel running across campus to get to the deserted steam tunnel.

The kennel supervisor came to my office to say they needed help to get Sasha back. One of the many rules on campus is not to run, or security will think there is an escape in progress.

I looked out my office window and saw Sasha near the campus boundary line, so I sprinted to my car to get her since she was not responding to her name. I soon learned that many dogs like to go for car rides, and they will come if they hear their favorite car for fear they will be left behind. Sasha recognized the sound of my car and came running in hopes of a ride.

Sasha’s handler came to me at the end of the day to apologize for letting her get loose and asked if it would be hard to find her a home since she seemed to have a strong prey drive. I soon saw that the boys in the program were getting discouraged because they had trained her, but no one was applying for her. I took her home for the weekend to get her off campus for a while.

On Monday morning, I wrote the check and filled out the application to adopt Sasha.