OUR DOGS WERE
SUPPOSED TO BE Temporary.
They came through the door needing somewhere safe to land. Some found the families they were waiting for. More than a few never left.
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.
foster failure (n.)
A lighthearted term in the rescue community for when a temporary foster becomes a permanent member of the family.
The paperwork says adoption. We call it the best kind of failure.
Foster long enough and you come to know the people who make rescue work — the shelters, the volunteers, the organizations doing it day after day.
The dogs
Apollo, Jabbah, Bert, Luna, Hank, Maple, Teddy, Rosie, Duke, Pepper, Clementine, Otis, Sophie, Scout
And plenty of others along the way.
His name is Whiskey.
Whiskey was a golden retriever adopted from the Montgomery County Humane Society. Later, he appointed himself doorman at a liquor store in Washington, D.C.
Errands ran long. Strangers learned each other’s names. We watched a liquor store become a neighborhood because a dog decided it should be one.
That’s the standard the bourbon has to live up to.
The bourbon came second. It doesn’t taste like it.
Stray Oak is a Kentucky straight bourbon — distilled in Owensboro, barrel-selected by us, bottled in Washington, D.C., at 90 proof. Whiskey earned his place on the label. The bourbon had to earn its place behind it — Platinum at the 2026 SIP Awards, and a 93-point Silver in New York.
The dogs had already shaped our homes. They were going to shape the company too.
So Stray Oak has committed 10% of its profits to canine rescue. It was the easiest decision in the company’s history.
