The worst night of the year at an animal shelter is the Fourth of July.
Ramona Ellis found that out in 2015. She was a volunteer at a county shelter in southwest Missouri, and she came in on the morning of July 5 to walk dogs. A shepherd in the back row had chewed through a steel water bowl overnight. Three other dogs wouldn’t come out from under their cots.
The fairgrounds fireworks go off less than a mile from the building, and the staff goes home at 6.
A year later Ramona asked the director for a key. She was 62 then, a retired school librarian. On July 4, 2016, she carried a lawn chair and a paperback into the kennel of the most frightened dog in the building and read out loud from 8 until midnight.
She did one kennel. The shelter had 58 dogs.
By the following June she had a signup sheet on the front counter.
Nine people came that first year with their own chairs. The year after, 21 did. A man who drives a cement truck sat with a 90-pound pit mix named Hobbs four years in a row, until somebody adopted Hobbs. Then the driver asked for the next biggest dog.
There are rules. No flash pictures. You sit low and let the dog decide how close to get.
This past July 4, 46 neighbors showed up at 7:30 with lawn chairs and books, Ramona among them. The shelter had 44 dogs that night, so two kennels got a second person.
Ramona took the last kennel on the left. A gray mastiff mix named Tilly had come in three days earlier. When the first shells went off at 9:40, Tilly crawled halfway into Ramona’s lap and shook. Ramona kept reading.
By 10:30 it was over. Down both rows, people were sitting with dogs asleep against their legs.
On the morning of July 5 the director walked the building and found every water bowl in one piece.
Three of the 46 went home that week with the dog they’d sat with. The cement truck driver was one.
Tilly went home with Ramona.
Have you ever sat up with a dog through the fireworks?