The Story of Goodness and Mercy

It all began in the fall of 1992.

I was living in the town of Euharlee (in Cartersville).

My Irish Setter/Lab mix had passed away at the age of 10 or 11.

I told myself I would not get another dog.

Until I saw a picture of some homeless Australian Shepherd mix puppies

in the local newspaper.

I could not get that picture out of my mind.

But when I called the Bartow Animal Shelter, it seemed I was too late.

The puppies were gone they said.

Mournfully, I went to the shelter anyway, at their suggestion

to see if there was another dog I might adopt.

After looking at all the dogs, I knew none of them were for me.

Imagine my joy when on going to the puppy room, I saw in the corner

a litter of six Australian mix pups huddled in a crate.

I was surprised that in spite of what I was told, there they were.

And that had I not gone anyway, I would have missed this.

When they let the little ones out, two stayed in the crate next to each other

just looking at me.

I don't recall when I first started thinking that two dogs would be better than one,

but there at that moment I knew that they were the ones for me.

Back then it was only $35 dollars to adopt a puppy

and that included their first set of shots and a spay/neuter certificate.

I had been reading a book by Philip Keller on Psalm 23.

In it he referred to goodness and mercy as God's watchdogs.

I looked up the Hebrew and found "tov" and "chesed".

I named the dark colored male Tov (goodness).

The lighter colored female, I named Chesed (mercy).

The "ch" being a hard "H" sound made it difficult to say

every time calling a dog, so I gave her the nickname Kessy.

(I will post more of this story over the next week as I remember with fondness these little gifts from God that I enjoyed for almost 16 years.)