It was negative 473 thousand degrees outside, but I still took him to the dogpark almost daily for a year, then every weekend. That day, I just couldn’t do the temperature, so I used the car to encourage him to run, otherwise he just sat at the gate and waited for me. He knew he wasn’t abandoned, and it became a game.

This is Kona with Nala, his sister. She was my baby first, at 2 months old. I adopted Kona at 7 months. A week after their first birthday, Nala slipped her collar unexpectedly. Wouldn’t come to me, and she took off after a stray. She was hit and killed crossing a highway. I found her and carried her out of the road. She is buried under a date palm at Delmon Kennels in Bahrain. I loved her deeply and cried for weeks. She was the gentler, more delicate, and smarter of the two.