Many young adults long for a mortgage, a marriage, or a BMW because they think these things will make them grown-ups, and that grown-ups have everything figured out. I was no different in the decade after college, except what I wanted was a dog. I lived in Northern California in my twenties, a period marked by bad jobs, graduate school, and a string of expensive little apartments where pets were always forbidden. Even so, I daydreamed not of a studio-friendly Pomeranian, but of an enormous Labrador retriever, the kind landlords imagine gnawing through their drywall or excavating gardens. The weekly farmers’ market near my home hosted a Lab rescue group, and I often spent Saturday mornings in their tent, petting the caninescareer, work-life balance, the meaning of life—would fall neatly into place.
