We returned home around midnight, so I opened the door to let Sadie use the bathroom one last time before we went to bed, and guess what I saw...the big, black dog. This time she was laying beside the back door like she was waiting for us to come home. It seemed to be a sweet dog, so I pet it and Lauren told me to give it some water. Surely the dog would return home during the night. I got up the next morning and took Sadie out. To my surprise the dog was in the same spot by the back door. Lauren and I are suckers for dogs, especially sweet ones, so we gave it a little food. I came back home after work and baseball practice and the dog was still there. I took a few minutes and played with the dog in the back yard and it seemed to be partially trained. After a couple of days of the dog refusing to go home, we decided to give it a name...CHARLIE. I assumed it was a male dog since it was big and black, but one day I noticed the dog squatted to pee so I decided to take a peek underneath...it was definitely a girl! However, we decided to stick with Charlie and the name fit her perectly. Over the next few weeks, we tried hard to find the owner. We called the pound to see if anyone had reported a missing dog, we put up signs around our neighborhood, and I even put her on the school's online bulletin board to see if anyone needed a dog. With a 2 month-old boy, we didn't have a need nor the room to have a dog...especially a 60-lb dog. With no luck in finding her a home, we quickly grew attached. We left her in the backyard in hopes that she would find her way home, but she decided to stay.
During Spring Break in April, Lauren had gone out of town with her family and I had baseball practice everyday. One day I came home and heard this awful yelping in the backyard. I opened the garage door to find the neighbor's dogs had come into our backyard and were cornering Charlie. One of the dogs was biting at Charlie's legs, so she defended herself against them. Because Charlie was much bigger than the other dogs, she injured one of the dogs trying to get out of the corner. It was not a pretty site. Blood was on my back porch and I was trying to chase off one of the neighbor's dogs, trying to get Charlie inside, and trying to take care of the dog that was hurt. After the craziness had settled, I stopped by the neighbor's house the following day to check on their dog. Unfortunately, too much damage had been done and they had to put the dog to sleep. I was upset about the whole ordeal...the dogs getting in our backyard and Charlie hurting the other dog, even if she was defending herself. I began to ask God, "Why in the world did you give us this dog that we do not want or need?"
I felt like God was telling me to make the most out of this situation...but how??? I went next door and offered to help pay for the vet bill, but I also felt led to invite them to church. Easter Sunday was coming up, so I invited them to bring their kids to church so they could participate in the Easter Egg hunt afterwards. Sure enough they came and I was so excited! Had God brought us Charlie so she could play a part in leading me to invite my neighbors to church? Who knows???
Time passed and we began to keep Charlie inside, so she would not get into mischief outside. Charlie would lay around and let Price pull at her hair and tail, she would lay her head in our lap and look at us as if to say, "Will you please rub my head," and she knew which buttons to push with Sadie to make her mad. She fit our family perfectly!
During this time, we have been praying for God to provide us with a bigger house to allow us to grow our family, as well as using it as a safe haven for teenagers to hang out on the weekends. My wife and I both lead Bible studies on Mondays, but we don't have a lot of room for them to hang out. We have been trying to sell our house and several people have been interested, but it has not sold yet. We were wanting to finish the fence in our backyard so Charlie could run around without getting into the woods, but we didn't want to spend that money if someone was going to buy our house soon. We decided to pray that God would be very clear about the simple matter of whether or not to put up a fence. And today, God answered that prayer...but in an unfortunate matter. This past weekend we took a trip to the beach, so Lauren's parents offered to keep Charlie. Lauren got an unfortunate call from her dad this morning informing us that Charlie passed away Sunday morning.
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