Our Puppy Rescue Mission

This was the dog that put joy back into the voice of the man I loved. Of course I had to help Chris bring Bear home from Afghanistan

- Anna Maria Chiasson

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 was like in the mountains of Paktia province, Chris described the abandoned animals roaming around looking for shelter and food—all in a flat voice. I was worried sick. Serving in a war zone was taking its toll on Chris, and I was helpless to do a thing about it except pray.

Finally the phone rang.

“Hi, babe,” Chris said.

That’s more like it! He hadn’t sounded this upbeat in weeks.

“Guess what?” Chris said. “I found a puppy. I named her Bear.”

“A puppy?” I couldn’t keep from smiling. Both of us were big-time animal lovers—one of the things we’d bonded over when we met during my senior year of high school.