We’ve got two rescue dogs. A lot of people hear that and think our dogs go out and save people in collapsed buildings or on mountaintops. I thought that for a while. I always wondered how that worked. Do they own a beeper? Anyway, it’s the other way around. People rescue the dogs from pounds or shelters.

It’s kind of like how we got T.

Anyone who considers adopting a child through the state has to be able to tolerate a degree of imperfection. Social workers are not driving from hospital to hospital picking up perfectly healthy newborns in need of parents. Mothers don’t walk out of the delivery room never to be seen again or if they do, chances are they haven’t been exactly vigilant about prenatal health.

These children are by and large damaged goods. They’ve been neglected or abused. That’s why they are where they are. It’s not there fault. It’s just the way it is.

Anyone who owns or knows a rescue dog is probably not as offended by what I’ve written as someone who thinks dogs walk around with pagers. People who know rescue dogs know they can be perfectly pleasant pets, healthy and well behaved. It was not their sins that landed them in the shelter. Once in a stable environment, they come into their own. They got a bad break and then fell into a good home, free to lounge on the couch or chase squirrels.

Eventually.

Walt, our shepherd, was like that. He had a lot of fear about being cornered and he had a pretty liberal view about what it meant to be cornered. It took some time but soon he relaxed and realized no one was going to beat him. He let people get closer and closer. Now he’s got no problem squeezing into the empty space on the couch between strangers.

That’s not to say that every rescued dog can be completely rehabilitated. There are some dogs that should never live in the same house as kids and not every rescued kid is ready to live with dogs.

The great thing is there are adults with room in their homes and hearts to accommodate one or the other.

But those are not our dogs nor is that our kid. They all get along swimmingly.