No matter which way the wind blew, there was always the subtle hint of cow manure in the air. This is what happens when you live directly between two dairy farms, which is where my family was situated for the first 17 years of my life. It was sort of a metaphor for the otherwise beautiful scenery of Glen, NY: namely that life never changed much and it was difficult to get a “fresh” start (pun intended).

Perhaps this is why my math teacher was so adamant about me going to college out of state. He even went as far as driving me out to MIT, probably to make sure I didn’t chicken out. This same teacher would lament about the fates of students that couldn’t quite make a clean break from the hometown and move far enough away. Inevitably, a large percentage of them would return to their parents homes within 6 to 12 months, staying only long enough before setting up permanent residence in the old hometown. And to further solidify the pattern, many would start living the same types of lives and lifestyles as their parents instead of creating their own.

Life lessons come about in the most surprising ways. It was almost a year ago that my wife and I spent 15 minutes trying to coax our new dog Linus into getting into our car. He was no longer an abandoned puppy at the Longmont Humane Society (which by the way is a phenomenal facility that makes these abandoned-to-rescued transitions as easy as possible on the animals). He was now going to have a loving home and every dog toy known to "man"... or at least every toy in petsmart that my wife thought was "cute" (full disclosure—now I'm the dog toy fiend, getting everything that will make him tail-wagging happy). With his one-year rescue anniversary upon us, I really wanted to reflect on the experience and share all the things I learned.