OUR PUPPY RESCUE MISSION

I SAT CROSS-LEGGED ON MY BED IN the house I rented with some other students and stared at the phone. It was 10 p.m. on a Sunday in March 2010. I was in my last year of a college program in food science and nutrition, doing a dietetic internship. My fiancé, Chris, was deployed to Afghanistan with the 172nd Mountain Infantry of the Army National Guard, and he hadn’t been able to call for almost two weeks. I took the framed photo from my nightstand and traced the lines of his face. He looked so strong, so capable in his camo fatigues, his eyes squinting against the Afghan sun.

Normally Chris was really social, the life of the party. But the last time we talked, the conversation had been dry and limited. He was being transferred to another forward operating base (FOB). Deployed for just a few months, he’d already sounded war-weary. When I asked what it