The Legend of the Black Dog

The Legend of the Black Dog

Part 1

Shannon’s Echo

Sep 6, 2026

This week, many years ago, Brooks found her dog online. The shelter had given the dog a placeholder name: Shannon. I think the idea of personifying an animal makes it harder to scroll past. Many people already had. Shannon had been trapped in a cage for so long that the kennels on both sides were empty, to keep spilled blood to a minimum. Only one volunteer could walk her, and even she needed to hobble the 80-pound Rottweiler-Husky mix, for those few moments each week.

Shannon was strong, completely unpredictable, and by the second week of September, Port Angeles Animal Rescue had given up investing their limited resources on a dog deemed unadoptable. She was scheduled to be euthanized the following Monday.

“But look, she’s smiling,” Brooks would say, every time she showed me her iPad. I would nod, as I madly prepared the house for the onslaught every Wooden Boat Festival would bring.

It was a scorching September, weather that brings hoards to the weekend festival. After settling Lady Washington’s alumni into every nook and cranny; and with a driveway awash in trailered boats, Brooks and I took a breath and a moment to chase her dream.

Stepping out of the car’s air-conditioned oasis, we were assaulted by the reek of heat-stressed trees, and serenaded by the loudest pack of mutts I had ever heard. Volunteers cowered in the cool of the office, failing to smile, as Brooks pointed to the oldest photo on the wall.

“Maybe this time,” is the best way to describe the attitude of a shelter dog when it first sees you… except for those too far gone to look up. Those remain in a far corner, wrapped in tight ball.

I soon realized the tour wasn’t taking us directly to Shannon. We saw the other dogs first. The volunteer let those wagging tails work their magic - and they would have… on anyone else.

I had not married anyone else.

We rounded a corner onto a battlefield.

Her name wasn’t Shannon. Nope. Wrong name. Wrong species in fact. Shannon wasn’t a dog. Mad scientists had crafted a love potion that worked just long enough for a black widow to mate with a honey badger.

A Rottweiler does not share your opinion… ever. Huskies invented profanity and spent generations crafting it into song. Alaska natives decided to mix this bad and worse together as payback for racial genocide, serving up the Rottsky breed as a Vesper Martini, shaken, not stirred.

An ink-black storm with fangs hurled itself against the kennel wall, retroactively naming that bulging barrier “cyclone fencing.” She was trying to bite through the wire as I held forth a hand. Somehow, she added licking to everything else she was doing. Teeth, tongue, lips, and wire; it was all very disturbing.

“Dog’s crazy!” were the only words we I could make out, as the volunteer hurried away. We followed her a moment later, when it became clear that staying was making it worse.

The scene of that gravel parking lot, the narrow bench, and Brooks crying, is present forever, despite the fact that I returned to death row, and somehow made a promise to someone I had just met.

Knowing that no one could hear me over the din, I didn’t bother to be subtle, “They are going to kill you, stupid dog, so SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!”

Nope. NOT going to do that.  “Open this door, I DARE YOU!” she barked, so like an idiot, I went back to the office and asked them to do just that.

“Your funeral,” someone muttered and went to find the Amazon with the thick gloves.

I rounded up Brooks, and then Shannon took us for a walk. Huskies are bred to pull, and Shannon’s mind was made up - she wasn’t going back to that cage - but stubborn has more than one name and two bitches shared the same leash.  Brooks never let go, even once she was down, and Shannon, choking and gasping against her collar, drug all buck-fifty pounds of her through the dirt, until I caught up. Then the leash became a line with a sailor on its bitter end.

Sensing the change, Shannon turned around and decided to remove her latest problem, but Shannon had hurt Brooks, and we were out of sight of the shelter, AND IT WAS ON…

I didn’t win, but I sure as hell didn’t lose… and I never let go of that leash.

I hung on to it through the paperwork. I hung on through the, “It’s okay, you can bring her back tomorrow. There’s no shame in that,” and never let go, even as I told Brooks I would replace the back seat…

… but that’s not what happened.

When the car door shut, she was a different dog. Not the tail-wagging, head-out-the-window, barking-at-the-deer, kind of dog, but the sullen, chin-on-the-sill, not-look-at-you, kind of dog.

“She’s sulking,” I said, shaking my head in the mirror, but Shannon only let out an enormous sigh, and completely ignored us.

“She hates me,” Brooks decided and started reciting names. She tried typical dog names, “Fido”, “Spot”, and the like. She tried flower names and tree names. She theorized that Shannon was a reincarnated version of Goldie, our last dog, and so tried that… nothing.

 Shannon glared into the middle distance, waiting for purgatory to end.

“Echo,” Brooks huffed in exasperation and I giggled at the reference. We were in the middle of watching the Dollhouse series. Echo was the code name of the main character, doomed to change personalities with each episode. It fit Shannon perfectly.

The car swerved as her furry head pressed between the seats, jostling my elbow, “Echo?” I asked in disbelief, nearly driving off the highway.

Echo’s wet nose brushed my ear and the promise I had made after screaming at her, back at the shelter, was sealed:

“Never bite me. More importantly, never bite her. We will give you a bed of your own, food, water, and lots of walks, but the barking and biting stop now. Got it? If I take you from this place, I promise you will never spend another night in a cage, but you’ve got to show me something, or I’ll shoot you myself.”

During the next year’s Wooden Boat Festival, I sent an email to the animal shelter, along with a photo of Brooks’ forever dog. In the subject field was the phrase, “Never give up.” The body chronicled the first four seasons of what was to become a 15 year story…

… The Legend of Echo the Black.