Save a Life: Adopt 1

Save a Life: Adopt 1

Save a Life: Adopt

Narrative Speech

NAME

PROFESSOR

COURSE

DATE
Save a Life: Adopt

The audience for which I am speaking is The American Humane Society for the purposes of promoting shelter adoption.

I remember when I first laid eyes on him—the little bundle of fur and energy who would come to bear the proud and noble name, “Tucker Isaac”. He was all bright eyes and big ears and furiously wagging tail. Plus, he had a nose as long as Pinocchio trying to cover up a lost weekend in Vegas. All this in a restless, three-pound bundle of Papillion puppy cuteness. It was love at first sight and I knew I wouldn’t be going home alone. That was the day that I saved the life of a shelter dog. And it was the day that he began saving my life in return.

There’s a reason that people with pets live longer. Owning a pet has been associated with lowering blood pressure, improving cardiovascular function, and promoting an overall higher quality of life. Anyone who’s spent any time in a hospital or rehabilitation facility is probably familiar with the pet therapy programs springing up across the nation. You may even have been comforted yourself by the feeling of a wet nose nuzzling at your bedside or the soft, soothing hum of a purring poof of fur in your arms. Nowadays, animals are used to comfort frightened children testifying against their abusers in courts of law; they are used to pull traumatized veterans from the horrors of a combat flashback. They can detect diabetic crises and alert those with epilepsy to an impending seizure. They can even sniff out cancer.

But my Tucker Isaac did none of those heroic things. As he grew into a robust adulthood and achieved the manly Papillion bulk of six and one-half pounds, he accomplished no great feats, save for the habit that won him his first name—the habit of tucking that glorious long nose of his beneath a forepaw and peering up coyly with his big brown eyes whenever he wished to charm a bacon-flavored treat out of me (which was most of the time—and which almost always succeeded).

And then there was that second great feat—the one that won Tucker his middle name. Isaac, meaning “he laughs.” Because that’s what Tucker Isaac did for me. He made me laugh—a lot. And as someone who has fought a brutal, lifelong war with depression, that is a gift not to be taken lightly. Tucker Isaac brought a joy into my world that I had never known. He was a bouncing, indefatigable, relentlessly happy ball of sweetness, a pure spirit that seemed to desire nothing more than to celebrate being alive and by my side. Oh, and bacon treats. Let’s not forget bacon treats.

I am convinced that there is a special spirit in shelter dogs, a recognition that their lives have been saved, a gratitude for every single day that comes because that was a day that was not promised and may too easily have been denied to dogs like them. And so their lives are given to saving the lives that saved theirs. This is precisely what Tucker Isaac did for me. I don’t know what my life would have been like had this funny-looking creature with the massive ears and nose for days not tumbled and leapt across my path, onto my lap, and into my heart. I don’t know if I would even still be here at all. I do know that Tucker Isaac forever changed me. He was my greatest teacher, my dearest friend, my fur baby, and now my guardian angel. He left too soon, passing at the young age of six from renal failure. But I like to imagine him bouncing on heaven’s clouds, tugging and growling at St. Peter’s robes, and incessantly worrying the angels’ wings, making Paradise a little less peaceful—but a lot more fun.