TWENTY-EIGHT AND COUNTING.

Between the founders of Stray Oak there have been twenty-eight foster failures.

It usually starts the same way. A dog arrives as a temporary guest. The plan is simple: give them a place to land until the right family comes along.

Sometimes that happens. Sometimes the dog stays.

We fostered long enough to understand the scale of it, the shelters staying open, the volunteers driving at night, the rescues absorbing dogs that have nowhere else to go. Most of it happens without much notice.

One of those dogs was a golden retriever named Whiskey. He had been adopted from the Montgomery County Humane Society and eventually took up residence at a liquor store in Washington, D.C.

Whiskey treated the shop like it was his job. He greeted everyone who walked through the door like they were the person he had been waiting for all day. People came in for bourbon. They stayed to talk. A dog was usually why.

The idea came from that. A spirits company that supports rescue work, not as a cause appended to the brand, but as the reason it exists.