This is Atticus.

He’s one of our dogs. He is the sweetest care-taker of a dog you will ever know. When we brought Pea home from the hospital, nearly two years ago, he was always at her side, was very protective of her. He’s almost 8. I adopted him when he was almost one-year old from a shelter in Ames, Iowa. I was there on a misguided notion that grad school was the place for me. But that’s another story. As it turns out, the real reason I was there was that I was meant to find this lovely dog who just melted my heart upon first sight.

He’s lived all over the country with us, starting out in Westchester County, New York, which is where I went back to after deciding that Iowa was not for me. We had three acres there and he would run laps around the house for hours on end. Around and around and around. He was happy and active. I could watch him for hours.

After New York, we moved on to rural Connecticut, again where we had a lot of property for him to romp around on. And romp he did. And he was happy and active.

From there, we made a pit-stop in Louisiana for my husband’s work, where we lived in a tiny corporate apartment and he didn’t get much exercise. But after only a few months, we were back in Texas. In a loft apartment in a crazy neighborhood where again, there was little exercise to be had. Sure, we’d leash him up and walk him around the block, but it’s not the same, not for a herding dog. And slowly, he packed on the weight.

Now we are in Fort Worth, again with a yard, but a tiny one. And by tiny, I mean barely there. Doing a lap basically consists of turning around. And he’s still fat. He looks like a bear. Sure, he wears it well, but it’s so hard to see him this way. It appears like he’s lost a little bit of that spark in his eyes. He’s quieter than he used to be. He’s still sweet, but something is missing. He just deserves so much more. More exercise, more backyard, more everything.