When I got him, it was the week of Trump’s inauguration and I was watching videos of black labs and German shepherds helping veterans with PTSD, jumping up at their faces when they were crying, shielding their bodies with their own, and I just cried into a pillow, wanting to be protected. I was super suicidal, and one night my partner was just like, you’ve never even been around a puppy. So we went into a pet shop just to play with a dog—look, we tried rescues, they denied us because we didn’t have a yard—to distract me for long enough to stop me from slitting my wrists, and they brought out
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