My sister often says, “you can’t live in Denver without owning a dog!”
She’s only half exaggerating. Her two passed away a few years ago, and with a traveling job and two young children, she’s decided to hold off on adopting another.
I married a cat person, and since my dogs were also long departed, it made no sense to add more chaos into our blended family.  Actually, my husband is an animal person in general, he just so happened to have cats when we met.
Last year, I was taking my son to the sporting goods store for a few things, and we noticed a doggie adoption clinic going on next door in the parking lot. It was the weekend of Hurricane Ike, and most of the dogs had been brought up from Texas.  I told Joe that we could go say hi and give the dogs some love, but we wouldn’t be taking one home.
One took us home.
Duke was the cutest, and saddest dog I’ve ever seen. He reeked of depression and desperation. He looked up at us with his big brown eyes and said, “Get me the hell out of here.”  The other dogs were doing flips and handstands to get the attention of anyone willing to take a chance on them. Duke was laying in his cage with his back to it all and didn’t move a muscle, even with flies crawling on his face.  Joe said, “Mom, I like this one!”  So did I.
Duke has been in our family for one year now!  We all love Duke, he gets loads of attention, lots of exercise and he’s totally come out of his shell.  He’s truly the best dog we’ve ever had. He walks off leash and would never run, he stays in our yard, he listens, he plays well with all other dogs and never tries to get into a pecking order battle and he gets protective when he needs to.
We’ve entered Duke into the Cutest Dog Competition as a way to bring attention to rescue dogs.  While I love full-bred dogs, for sure, I think this mutt is king. We had him DNA tested and he turns out to be a Golden Retriever/Shar Pei mix.
So help out needy animals and vote for Duke!
Gretchen Rosenberg is Duke’s people mom.  When they aren’t out chasing sticks, Gretchen sells Denver real estate.