Five families took Ruby home from a Rhode Island animal shelter. Five families brought her back.
Ruby was an Australian Shepherd and Border Collie mix with more energy than any of them could handle. The shelter labeled her unadoptable.
The man who would later know her best put it bluntly. She was, he said, just unmanageable.
Five homes, five returns. Each time, Ruby ended up back behind the same shelter gate, and each time the same volunteer took her in and fostered her until the next family came.
Not everyone at the shelter saw a bad dog. Some of the staff saw a dog with a ton of energy that had never been aimed at the right thing. It just needed to be focused, they believed, and maybe put to work.
But nobody had found her that kind of work yet. After five failed homes, Ruby was close to being put down.