All because of a giant grey dog.

D - I want a great dane. Me - No way, too big. So we got Roxy. A very big Great Dane. She was 3 years old and 145 pounds when she came to live with the Harrisons. Her owner was giving her away because she had too many dogs. Roxy was the first to go because she liked to escape and she ate the most. Roxy would lay in front of the tv like a pillow for the kids while they watched a movie. She wasn't very friendly to strangers. Would eat anything left on the counter, including whole loaves of bread in the bag and Poptarts in their silver wrapper. Nothing was safe in the kitchen. Her drool could fill a swimming pool and sometimes her eyes looked crossed. After rides in the truck, we had to wipe down the ceiling. She bit her toenails incessantly and was murderously gassy.

I never appreciated her until she got cancer. At the end of what we call "lake season" Roxy started limping. X-rays came back good but slowly a tumor grew from the size of an inflamed muscle to the size of a country ham on her shoulder. She lived with it for 6 months.

We knew our family wouldn't be complete without another giant dog in the house. We searched through 1028 Great Danes across the country on pet adoption websites. We found Sierra 5.5 hours away in the foster program of The Ohio Great Dane Rescue. They had loved her and cared for her until she found her forever home... us. She fit right into our family. At 4 years old, she was well-trained, UTD on shots and spayed. What a wonderful way to get a pet! The puppiness over and she was conditioned to be a forever family pet.

We were fascinated by the pet adoption process and drove back to Toledo a month later to adopt Sierra's litter mate Samson. I'll share more about Samson later. Our whole family participated in the choosing and adoption process of our pets. We loved them so much we couldn't imagine our precious pets being abandoned. And it became our cause. With the guidance of an experienced rescue, we are now the Kentucky rescue extension of the Ohio Great Dane Rescue. We don't have a farm or even a whole acre of land. But we can do SOMETHING. And something is always better than NOTHING. And we can do something together.