“Love is friendship that has caught fire.” Ann Landers wrote that. I like this perspective more than the more popular idea of “falling in love”. There may be less passion in the beginning, but I think that crescendo that builds is ultimately more satisfying. I was reminded of the quote when my foster dog, Scrappy, recently passed. When I met him, Scrappy didn’t make my heart flip-flop the way some dogs do. Little did I know what was to come.

I didn’t pick Scrappy because I wanted him to be my dog. I took him because he was facing euthanasia. I wanted to work with him to see if he could cheat that fate. Scrappy had been returned by his adopters because he tended to growl at visitors in the home, especially the young ones. He never bit anyone, but the parents didn’t feel he was safe. So back he came. My intent was to get him adopted again but it turned out that I did not have the skills to make that happen.

I recall the precise moment I decided that I would keep Scrappy as a permanent foster. One evening, I was working in the yard on a broken sprinkler. Scrappy came up and quietly lay down next to me. Unlike most dogs he didn’t try to “help”. As I worked, I would occasionally look over at him and he would look up at me. Then we both turned our attention back to the work at hand. We repeated this exchange several times. There was something in his face that was so… charming. I felt a little twinge inside and whispered to him, “Don’t worry, Scrappy, I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” “What, me worry?” he replied with a wink.

Scrappy had an impish sense of humor. He liked to tell each new dog in the house that they had to pick a professional wrestling name. You know–just in case they ever wanted to join the wrestling circuit. He pestered them until they came up with their names. But the joke was on Scrappy in the end because they created awfully good names. I liked “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Rocco” a lot but my favorite was “Br-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ndemonium”. That one came from his sister Brandee.

Scrappy looked like a handsome Lab mix. And a mix he surely was, according to his Wisdom DNA Panel: 35% Labrador Retriever with American Put Bull Terrier, Rottweiler, Chow Chow, and Alaskan Malamute rounding out the top 5 DNA contributors. The remaining 29% of his DNA included Siberian Husky, American Staffordshire Terrier, two Shepherd breeds, and a whopping 4% Golden Retriever along with a smattering of other breeds.

From somewhere in that pool, Scrappy got the DNA that gave him his Hall of Fame eye contact abilities. He had these big, round eyes with which he could maintain eye contact for long periods of time. But he also had a “look” for dogs that let them know that he was not to be trifled with. Scrappy could freeze another dog at 10 paces with a mere glance. He wasn’t a fighter though, despite his name. The point was that he had this vibe that kept fights from happening.

Scrappy had a personal space bubble which I knew to respect. I realized I wasn’t going to get a lot of close physical contact from Scrappy. Even so, Scrappy had a way of letting you know how much he loved you by the way he looked at you. Jody Jones, Homeward Bound founder and 1^st President, used to say that she had never seen a dog look at someone the way Scrappy looked at me. Hyperbole? Sure. But it’s true that Scrappy could pack a lot into his gaze.

Scrappy unexpectedly proved to be an outstanding helper dog in play group. He was expert in identifying dogs that couldn’t be with other dogs or needed lots of help to do so. If he wanted nothing to do with a particular dog, we knew we had to take extra precautions when making introductions. Scrappy helped a lot of dogs that appeared to be what many people call “aggressive”. I loved watching how these dogs respected Scrappy. Sometimes the respect came out of a solid correction from Scrappy. Sometimes they were given “The Look”. Sometimes he didn’t have to do anything but just be Scrappy. Over the course of his career Scrappy helped dozens of dogs—probably saved a few from being euthanized.

“Love is friendship that has caught fire”.

It’s not that I didn’t like Scrappy at the beginning. I was happy to have him. He wasn’t a burden. But I never imagined how important he would become to me. How much I would be humbled by his abilities. How much I came to depend on his good humor and companionship. One day it hit me that I didn’t know how I was ever going to manage without him. Now I have to find out.