We first met Katie at the League for Animal Welfare in 2003, when our family began to volunteer there. She was one of the dogs we worked with when we were doing our volunteer training. At the time, she was looking pretty rough; she is allergic to fleas, and before being rescued she had been infested with them. As a result she had lost clumps of hair all over her body and looked pretty miserable. Despite that, she was a very sweet dog and she quickly became my mother's favorite at the shelter. A few weeks after we started working with her, a shelter worker came by and said that they may have found a potential adopter for Katie. But within a few minutes, Katie was back in her kennel, the worker said the family hadn't even wanted to meet her once they saw how she looked. When she heard that, my mom marched up to the front desk to fill out the paperwork, and Katie has been with our family ever since. She's 12 years old now, and we couldn't imagine life without her.