My Thanksgiving Miracle

by Colleen Paige

It was a week before Thanksgiving when a starving, rain-soaked black dog ran down the middle of a highway at three in the morning. Two young women driving home from a party saw her in the downpour, pulled over, and opened their door. Without hesitation, the dog leapt inside, desperate to escape the cold. One of the girls wrapped her jacket around the shivering body, and the dog collapsed into her lap, finally surrendering to sleep from sheer exhaustion. The next morning, they brought her to the local shelter.

Only hours later, I arrived...searching for a best friend. Every dog barked and pawed at their kennels, each begging for a home. All except one. She was skeletal, silent, her brown eyes fixed on mine with a light I feared was fading. She didn’t need to bark or leap or beg...her gaze pulled at something deeper in me. I knew instantly...this was fate.

At just 28 pounds...barely half her normal weight...her ribs jutted through her coat. Her skin carried cigarette burns. Swollen welts marked the cruelty of beatings. She was covered in fleas and open wounds. The shelter explained she would need to remain five days in case someone came forward to “claim” her. I was horrified. “A chance to explain what?” I cried. “Look at her. Whoever left her in this condition doesn’t deserve her back.” The officer relented slightly, admitting, “No one wants a black dog anyway. If she isn’t claimed, and you don’t adopt her, she’ll be euthanized.”

From that moment, I refused to leave her side. Every day, I sat by her kennel until, on the fifth day, she was mine. When I finally drove her home, the weight of those days crashed over me...I collapsed against the steering wheel and sobbed. Then I wrapped my arms around her frail body, kissed her battered head, and promised her the rest of her life would be different. For the first time, her tail gave the smallest wag.

The road ahead was not easy. When I first set a bowl of food before her, she shrieked in terror, urinated in fear, and pressed her face to the wall. Someone had beaten her for daring to eat. For months, I had to leave food scattered on the floor and leave the house so she could eat in safety. It took a year before she could eat from a bowl in my presence.

But slowly, the wounds of her past began to heal. Beneath the scars was a dog full of joy, mischief, and devotion. She adored children, found delight in visiting retirement homes, and lived for water...racing into the sea with a passion that made it clear she had found her truest element. That’s how she came to be Sailor, a name far better suited than the one the shelter had given her.

Sailor grew into a radiant soul who taught me more about resilience than I could have ever imagined. She reminded me daily that love has the power to stitch back even the most broken spirits. For fourteen years, she was my best friend, my child, my soul dog. When she passed away on October 7, 2014, from liver cancer, I felt a piece of myself go with her.

But Sailor’s legacy did not end there. In her honor, I founded National Black Dog Day, now embraced as National/World Black Dog Day. Each year on October 1, people around the globe come together to lift up black dogs...the ones most often overlooked in shelters...and remind the world that they are just as worthy of love.

Sailor was once unwanted, discarded, and nearly forgotten. Yet she became my miracle. And through her story, she continues to save countless others still waiting in the shadows for someone to see them.