How one Dog Changed a Community

Meet Braveheart.

This is a post I wrote on my own blog in 2019. I am reposting it here because it meant something to a lot of people, but more than that, I believe that the lessons our community learned from this miraculous dog, Braveheart, are so relevant still. I’ve never in my life seen anything as impressive and memorable as the way this dog and his story impacted people.

“Just a dog” is a phrase I never want to hear again in my life. Ever.

Here’s the post:

Last week I was scrolling through Facebook when Braveheart’s page popped up on my feed. “This is a post I hoped I would never have to write.” My heart sank. A fear-adrenaline rush. I knew without reading any further what I was about to see. Brave is gone. All I could think was “No!” Wednesday, January 23, 2019.

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In 2013, we all fell in love with a dog. Some 24,000 of us, judging by Brave’s Facebook page. But this was never, ever “just a dog.” You all know Brave’s story; he was discovered near death in a storage facility in the sweltering Louisiana summer heat in 2013. His abuser went to trial in 2015. My blog…