Service with a Smile
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Very Good, Very Bad Dog
By Kathryn Hackett Bales

Fun fact: The first prison-based dog-training program was established by a nun in the early 1980s in Washington State. Hundreds of these programs now exist in the U.S.

My neighbor arrived at my door eleven years ago, clutching a tiny, skeletal ice cube under her jacket. I turned on the heating pad as she unwrapped a purebred, red-nosed Pit Bull puppy, about ten days old. As I wrapped her in the heating pad, I remembered the promise that I had made to my husband when the last of my Pit Bulls died at the age of sixteen. During our years together, he had asked only one thing of me: that I bring home no more Pit Bulls.

When I heard his car come down the driveway, I dreaded his reaction when he saw what I was holding. But he merely took the dog, about the size of a soda can, from my arms and leaned back in his recliner while she cuddled up beneath his chin. Each time she woke up for feeding and cleaning, he put her back on his chest.
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