Flight to Forever

Because life is nothing without a slew of complications, I took Toby home on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. With little thought to transportation or logistics, I suppose you could say that I was somewhat irresponsible with my timing. Traveling with a dog is not as easy as one might think, and traveling with a paperless rescue is even more complicated. From Virgin America’s corporate standpoint, Toby was an illegal alien that I was harboring. Millions of phone calls later, I switched our flight to Southwest and called my parents with the exciting news that they should prepare to meet their new granddog! My mom was thrilled, and my dad, well, not so much.

We had a few days before takeoff, and in those days it became apparent that something was very wrong with Toby. His energy level was nonexistent, and depression and angst seeped out from every fiber in his little body. I would have moved mountains to see just a little wag in his tail, but all my efforts were unsuccessful. As time progressed, Toby’s condition deteriorated.

Out of desperation I called the woman who so willingly handed Toby off to me. She was less than unhelpful, responding to my desperate call with an email writing my cries for help off as Toby’s “new home adjustment period”. While the original plan was to foster Toby, I soon realized that Toby was mine, adoption papers or not. I wasn’t looking to bring a dog into my already complicated life, but the situation was grim, and helping was not an option. Toby found me for a reason, and from this point forward I had to be his advocate, campaigning and petitioning on his behalf. So I deleted her email, looked at my new “son” and realized that we had a long road ahead of us.

In hindsight, I suppose I never really planned to find Toby a home. I brought Toby to work one day and a coworker made a rather intelligent observation. She asked me when I was planning to find Toby a home, before or after I had his tags engraved with all of my information? The comment was a “realty check” and a realization that engraving those tags was symbolic in ways that I didn’t understand at the time. That night I sent out a mass email with a subject title that read, “Toby Patton Has a New Home!”