The Rescue That Saved Me.
When we brought Prudence home in the fall of 2019, the plan was simple. She was a rescue, a young greyhound with long legs, a curious personality, and more energy than we were fully prepared for. We gave her a home, a place to grow, and a family to settle into. At the time, that felt like the full story. We rescued her.
It did not take long for that idea to change.
As she grew, she developed a habit of waking up early. Around five thirty, sometimes six in the morning, she would start whining from her crate downstairs. At first, I did what most people would do. I would get up, let her out, and assume she just needed to go to the bathroom. I would head back toward the couch and try to get a little more sleep, expecting things to settle down.
They did not.
She kept whining. Morning after morning, the same routine. I tried to put in just enough effort to quiet it down and get back to rest. That cycle lasted a couple of weeks, and it became clear it was not going to fix itself. At the same time, the rest of the house was starting to feel it. Early mornings with a restless dog tend to make for grumpy people.
One morning, already up and knowing sleep was not coming back, I decided to take her out for a walk.
It was not a grand decision. It was practical. I was awake, she had energy, and walking her seemed like the easiest way to solve the problem. That first walk was short. Nothing special. Just a loop through the neighborhood to burn off some of her energy and hopefully bring a little quiet back into the house.
The next morning, she woke up again.
So we walked again.
At the time, I was not thinking about building a habit or improving my mental health. I was solving a problem that kept showing up early every day. I started bringing headphones with me, listening to music just to pass the time. After a while, the music lost its appeal, and I switched to audiobooks. That small change ended up opening a door I did not expect.
What started as a short walk began to grow. One mile turned into two. Two turned into three. Somewhere around three or four miles, something shifted. I found myself looking forward to the walks instead of dragging myself through them. I started paying attention to how far we were going, thinking about better shoes, tracking steps, and noticing how I felt afterward.
At the same time, something else was happening beneath the surface.
For most of my adult life, I have lived with depression. It showed up as low energy, lack of motivation, irritability, frustration, and a tendency to isolate when things got heavy. There were nights when I would spend hours in my office, sometimes most of the night, not being productive, just sitting there and feeling like I was mentally drowning without being able to explain why. It is not an easy thing to communicate to the people around you, and for a long time I did not have a clear way to manage it.
Those early walks with Prudence started to give me something I did not realize I was missing.
A simple reason to get up.
A place to go.
A way to move forward before the day had a chance to get away from me.
We expanded beyond the neighborhood and found a bike path that connected several parks. The routine settled in. Early mornings, quiet streets, familiar paths. Over time, people started to recognize us. A wave here, a short conversation there. It created a small sense of community that I had not expected from something that started out of frustration.
Prudence played her part in all of it. She is independent, loyal, and always ready to go. She has an energy and endurance that still surprises me. We have walked as much as fifteen miles together, something I would not have believed when we first brought her home. She wants to move, she wants to explore, and she wants to be there with me.
Not every walk was easy.
One morning, we were attacked by two stray dogs. It happened quickly, and it was not something I had ever prepared for. Because of her size and body type, I could not just pick her up and remove her from the situation. We had to stand our ground and defend ourselves until a neighbor heard the commotion and came out to help. We got through it physically, though the mental impact stayed with me for a while. I love dogs, and that moment forced me into a situation I never thought I would be in.
Even that became part of the story.
It reinforced that these walks were not just routine. They were real. They came with unpredictability, challenges, and moments that tested both of us. We kept going.
Over time, the walks became something I looked forward to. Even when I travel, I find myself needing that same start to the day. The movement, the quiet, the space to think. It has become part of me at my core. I rarely skip, and when I cannot go as far, I still go.
Physically, it helped me stay in shape. Mentally, it did more than I expected. It gave me structure. It gave me clarity. It gave me a place to direct my energy instead of letting it sit and build in the wrong ways. It also led me into audiobooks, which opened up another path of growth that shaped my life in ways I could not have predicted.
When I think about what Prudence has done for me, it comes down to something simple.
She grounded me.
She gave me a reason to start my day with purpose, to move, to think, and to reset before everything else began.
We brought her home thinking we were giving her a better life.
Looking back, I am not sure I would have built the same one without her.
That is why I call it the rescue that saved me.
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