I Thought We Rescued a Stray Dog. I Didn’t Realize She Was Quietly Rescuing Us
It was the kind of night that made you question every choice—cold, relentless rain, and a silence between us that said more than words ever could. That’s when we saw her: a golden retriever puppy, soaked to the bone, curled under a rusted bench like she’d already been forgotten by the world. “We’ll keep her for one night,” my husband said, not knowing what we were inviting into our lives. We thought that…
It was a cold, wet Tuesday night in Istanbul—one of those rains that seems to seep into your bones. My husband, Emre, and I were walking home from a dinner that ended in silence. Not a fight, exactly. Just the heavy kind of quiet that creeps in when love feels tired.
And then we saw her.
A golden retriever puppy, barely old enough to be away from her mother, was curled under a rusted park bench. Her fur was soaked and matted, her ribs faintly visible beneath her damp coat. She looked up when we passed, but didn’t bark or whine—just stared, like she’d already accepted being left behind.
