Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we offer our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems).

Fourteen years after adopting my dog from Denver Dumb Friends League, I returned there with her body.

My wife and I had hired a vet to come to our house and put down our 16-year-old, golden-furred Daisy — on our sunny back porch, with more than a little steak as her last meal — then arranged for her to be cremated at the same nonprofit shelter where we adopted her 14 years earlier.

As I pulled into the Dumb Friends League parking lot in March 2021, an employee approached me to help transfer Daisy’s body from our car (in which she enjoyed clouding up the windows) to a wheeled cart. I cried as I lifted the blanket cradling Daisy, and so did the employee. As we locked eyes in a sincere moment of grief, I was stunned by the full-circle feeling of it all. What a lovely, compassionate person — and place.

Yes, shelters can be depressing, for so many reasons. The churn of unloved animals requires a religious devotion to the cause. Denver Animal Shelter last year took in more than 7,400 animals — its highest number in 10 years, according to CBS Colorado. Euthanizations there were also at a 10-year high. When I revisited the Dumb Friends League in 2022 for a Denver Post article, I learned it was sometimes getting 100 new dogs per day, and had hit “critical” capacity following a raft of pandemic-pet returns.

But adoptions are also up in many cases, and it’s nice to have had a tiny part in that. It was 18 months after Daisy’s death, and my kids were eager to bring a dog back into our lives. We’d taken care of a stray chihuahua a few months earlier and fallen in love with her. We wanted one to keep. Daisy had come to us skinny and fearful, but she left the world happy and well-adjusted. Maybe we could help another lost soul?

We chose a 4-year-old chihuahua named Uma who, like Daisy, has a sad backstory and came to us in bad shape. She’s also now been rehabilitated into a beloved family member with patience, consistency and lots of treats (for all involved). We wouldn’t have found her at all if not for the Aurora Animal Shelter.

I’m not hammering on the moral virtues of pet adoption so much as the possibilities. You want to buy a purebred show dog? Go for it. I’ve just realized that my wife and I happen to like fixer-uppers. Or maybe they happen to like us. Either way, adoption has been a quality-of-life improvement for all involved.

Bumper sticker idea incoming: “I’m a rescue, too.”

Visit Dumb Friends League (ddfl.org), Denver Animal Shelter (denver.gov) or Aurora Animal Shelter (auroragov.org) for more information.