The Same Week My Son Sat Me Down at the Kitchen Table With Assisted Living Brochures and Told Me It Was “Time to Think About the Future,” I Walked Into a County Shelter and Somehow Came Home With a Retired Police Dog Marked CLEARANCE: $25 — None of Us Realized That Decision Would Be Tested Sooner Than Anyone Was Ready For

PART 1 — The Week My Children Decided My Life Was Getting Too Small

Retired K9 Rescue Story — that phrase would eventually describe one of the strangest turning points of my life, but on the morning it began I was simply sitting at my kitchen table feeling like the walls around me were quietly closing in. My name is Linda Crawford, I am fifty-nine years old, and until recently I believed I still had plenty of life left exactly where I was.

My daughter Melissa Crawford didn’t see it that way.