How a rescue dog helped me grow up — and made me rethink marriage

On one of the first nice days of spring, my two dogs lounge in the grass by our patio, their noses popping at all the smells that emerge when the world warms up.

They’re here because of Bexley. Maybe I am, too.

When I first met him, in a small, fluorescently lit room at a D.C. animal shelter, he was a matted gray mop who kept rolling onto his back. “How cute, he wants a tummy rub,” thought 24-year-old me. Fifteen years of dog-parenting later, I understand that he was saying, the best way he knew how: “I am terrified. Please don’t hurt me.”