When I was a child, my family adopted a puppy from a shelter
we named Scooter. We loved the puppy and decided to save our
money to buy her a jacket.

We’d seen fancy dogs in magazines with little jackets and we
wanted Scooter to have one too.

At the Pet Store there was the beautiful pink “leather”
jacket with black “velvet” trim. It was the most expensive
one that was stocked, but Scooter deserved the best.

We sold bottles, we ran errands, we did everything to
raise money to buy Scooter a jacket.

This took a long time, but each week we’d go to the Pet Store
to make sure the jacket was still there and at the same
price.

Finally we had every cent. We went to the Pet Store to buy
the jacket. It was there, as it had been for months and
still the same price.

“We’d like to buy that jacket,” we said.

The clerk, who had seen us once a week for over six months
continued not to recognise us and told us the price. I showed
her the money.

“What kind of dog do you have?” The woman asked.

My sister said, “A mutt…” as she’d heard my father say.

“Mutt? Mutt’s don’t wear Pink! Mutts wear plaid!”

And with that proclamation, she pulled down some ugly jackets
we had ignored and slapped one on the counter.

“No, we don’t want that, we want the Pink one.” I said.

“It won’t fit a Mutt.”

There are moments in life in which you see through words,
through people and they call it an Epiphany. I had one
in that Pet Store.

I put my money back in my pocket and we left.
And never returned.

I don’t know why that woman refused to sell us the jacket.
I don’t know for what reason she had decided the “Mutts
wore Plaid,” but she lost the sale.

Scooter might have been no more than a mutt to her, but
Scooter was everything to us.