Before Dylan was born
Dora came from El Centro, which is a flat hot city in the desert near the Mexican border, a long way from the ocean. She had been a stray there, which means she had no family and nobody knew exactly how old she was or where she had come from before the shelter. The best guess was that she was born in the fall of 2008. At some point she was brought north to a shelter in Encinitas, which is a beach town in San Diego County with a lot more trees and a lot more fog than El Centro.
Mama was working at that shelter. One day she came home and told Papa about a dog.
That was February 18, 2010, and that was how it started.