I grew up with outdoor dogs. This was the way it was back then, where I was from. Dogs were beloved, but not welcome on the couch or in the kitchen. The dogs of my youth were thus matted, sandy, and often drooling. Dogs with mud caked in their fur and flea-bitten noses. Dogs who rode untethered in the backs of flatbed trucks. Dogs that wouldn’t know a canine sweater if they swallowed one. Dogs that, when injured, were not taken to the vet for $3,300 hip-replacement surgeries, but left to adapt or, if they couldn’t, walked one last time out behind the garden shed.

My mother’s West Virginia family had no dogs, as even a free dog costs money. So when I was allowed to adopt my first puppy—a mutt in an unusual fit of girlishness I named Taffy—I also got a long lecture about finances and responsibilities. Taffy was more than just my first dog. She was an extravagance. Even so, Taffy was mostly relegated to the yard. As were all the dogs that followed. My parents were not what have come to be known as “dog people.”

“You don’t want to deal with the havoc of an indoor dog!” my mother would advise. “The mess alone.”

It wasn’t until I graduated from college that I adopted my first real dog, which is to say, the first animal I would truly raise on my own. Indoors. The way real dog people do.

I was living in Knoxville, Tennessee, and a friend told me about a shelter just outside of town that specialized in “hard to place” animals. Why I believed I was equipped for a “hard to place” animal having had essentially no experience with pets beyond refilling the outside water bucket and picking poop out of the yard can only be chalked up to the willful arrogance of youth.

On my initial visit to the shelter, I met several adoption candidates. The volunteers, who were not unaware of my limitations, steered me toward “mature” dogs that seemed really, really tired.

“Buttercup is a sweet old girl who is happiest in her bed,” one said as I stroked Buttercup’s wiry chin. “And we also have Jake,” she continued. “He is almost blind, really gentle, very passive.”

I liked Buttercup and Jake. I did. But while I was weighing the pros and cons of a blind dog versus an inert dog, another candidate announced herself. She did this by lunging at my thigh.

The volunteers gasped, quickly pulling her off, breathlessly asking how she got out and ushering her back to her “special place” far from other dogs and visiting strangers.

“What’s her story?” I asked.

The workers shot each other panicked glances.

“Oh, Pandy is not for you. She has some unique challenges.”

“Like what? Her name?” I joked, eyeing Pandy, who was vibrating with hostility in her pen, staring at me as if I were raw hamburger in a people suit.

“She was badly abused,” a volunteer said. “And it has left a lot of emotional scarring. She will be a handful for even the most skilled dog trainer.”

And there it was. The gauntlet.

“Can I make an appointment to see her again?”

The volunteers conferred in the back of the room like car salesmen. Eventually, the head shelter worker emerged with a ream of forms.

“Fill these out, then we’ll see.”