06/12/2026
Week 9 Update: When Plans Change - It's Time To Adapt
Over the last two months here, Iâve been asked the same question more than any other: What brought you to Hickory?
Letâs be honest, after eight weeks of debt, payroll, marbles, Facebook headaches, and Spectrum, I figured it might be nice to switch gears for a few weeks.
So what brought me to Hickory? ⌠The truth is, I never planned to leave Colorado.
My plan was simple. I was going to retire there with my wife, Lynn. I had what I believe was the best executive director job in animal welfare.
The staff⌠The community⌠The Board⌠The animals⌠The friendships⌠The relationships built over 12 years⌠Highest save rate in the state 12 years in a row⌠I truly had it all.
So if youâre wondering why I would leave all of that, youâre asking the same question I asked myself.
The answer is Lynn.
When we moved to Colorado twelve years ago, I adjusted to the high altitude on day one. Lynn? Not so much. During our first week there, I thought I might have to tell my Board, âSorry, guys⌠I canât take the job.â She was that sick.
Eventually, she adjusted enough that we could stay⌠But then, about 11 years later (one year ago), things changed.
The altitude began taking a serious toll on Lynn. It got to the point where she couldnât walk our dogs with me anymore. Deep down, I knew what that meant. Retiring in Colorado was no longer an option.
I loved my shelter⌠I loved my staff⌠I loved my Board⌠I loved my community.
But I love my wife more.
So we began talking about leaving. Not because we wanted to. Because we had to. The problem? We had no idea when or where we were going. Or what I would do for a living.
Whenever we traveled back home to New England, something became obvious. Lynn could breathe. She felt better. She had more energy. Clearly, a lower altitude made a tremendous difference.
So the search began. Moving back home to New England made sense to be closer to family and friends. But home prices in New England have skyrocketed since we left in 2001. Sadly, we can't afford to go home. Somewhere else...
Two of my Colorado team members, who were from North Carolina, started telling me how much they loved this state.
Then my close friend Billy, who also worked at my shelter, and is from North Carolina, pretty much closed the deal. North Carolina, it was.
Lynn wanted to be close to the water. So I started looking at coastal real estate prices and quickly realized that unless I won the lottery, beachfront living was off the table.
Thatâs when I saw the mountains out west. The Appalachian Trail. Born and raised in New England, I had spent plenty of time hiking portions of it over the years.
Mountains for me. Water for Lynn. Maybe this could work?
Then Lynn found one of those articles. You know the ones. âBest Places to Live.â⌠âTop Places to Retire.â Hickory was #1 on both lists.
So we looked closer at the Hickory area. Mountains nearby? Check. Water nearby? Check. A vegan restaurant? Check. And apparently a TJ Maxx.
What the heck, Doug? A TJ Maxx? Yes... A TJ Maxx.
In Colorado, we drove forty-five minutes to get to one, and it happens to be Lynnâs favorite store on Earth. She gets the shakes when we pull into a TJ Maxx parking lot. Seriously. She does.
So if we were moving across the country, there had better be a TJ Maxx nearby for my wife.
Checkmate. Hickory checked every box. And we hadnât even visited yet.
Our plan was to wait. Specifically, we planned to wait for Jasmine.
Jazzy is our eleven-and-a-half-year-old basset hound.
We adopted her from my shelter shortly after arriving in Colorado. She was all of 6 months old. Today, sheâs completely blind. Both eyes have been removed. And yet, if you watched her move around our home, you would never know it.
She knows every room. Every doorway. Every turn. Every tree in the backyard. Every rock. Every step. She is remarkable.
Moving a senior dog is stressful. Moving a blind senior dog? I didnât want to go there.
So we planned to wait. One year? Two years? More? That was up to Jasmine.
Then, several months after I set up a Google Alert for Hickory, something popped - The Humane Society of Catawba County was looking for a new Executive Director.
Seriously?
We were already discussing Hickory as the place where we wanted to spend the last chapter of our lives. And suddenly there was an opening for the same work Iâd been doing for more than twenty years? Goodness, you canât make that stuff up.
Then another thought crossed my mind. Who in their right mind is going to hire a sixty-seven-year-old guy they donât know?
So I got creative with my cover letter...
This cover wasnât traditional. It wasnât bullet points. It wasnât a list of accomplishments. It was a short story. I wanted the Search Committee to feel what I was feeling. That letter began with:
âDear Hiring Committee, The silence always gets me first. Not the barking, not the clamor, but the stillness. Itâs the sound of waiting. Of lives suspended in the unknown. Twenty-three years ago, I stepped into that quiet for the first time, and Iâve never stepped out. That moment didnât just start my career; it defined my promise, to do more than care: to fight for them every day.â
A Board member called me rather quickly, and three weeks later, I was offered a job I didn't think I had a chance of getting.
Then, one month before I started, the Board publicly announced my hire. Social media exploded. Not in a good way.
So my Board asked me to fly out to meet with the public a month before my start date. Letâs just say those meetings werenât exactly a warm welcome to North Carolina. There were tough questions. Strong opinions. Raised voices. People made it very clear they didn't like my hire. They didn't like me.
One woman, about three feet away from me on day two, walked up to me, pointed directly at my face, and said, âWe just went from bad to worse with your hire.â Fair enough. If I were sitting in their shoes, I probably would have had questions too.
But "bad to worse?" ... Goodness. We had known each other for all of three seconds. At least give me two days on the job...
Several people from those public meetings have since come into the shelter asking to speak with me. And all of them, every one of them, have been super nice. In fact, someone from the second three-hour public meeting was at the shelter late last week, asking my front-desk team to speak with me.
She asked if I remembered her. I said she looked familiar, but I couldnât place where I'd seen her. She said she had attended one of the meetings before I started. I remembered her now.
She came in needing help with a dog she cared deeply about that was in a difficult situation. My Animal Services Manager and I worked closely with her to make sure this dog was safe, ultimately bringing him into our care this Monday.
When she first walked in to speak with me last week, she was emotional about the dog and understandably worried. By the time I walked her and her husband out to their car on Monday, things were very different.
She stopped, glanced at me, and softly said:
âDoug, can I give you a hug?â
I wonât lie. That one got me. Because a few months earlier, she had been sitting in a room full of people who werenât so sure about me. A room filled with questions. Doubts. Concerns.
A room where more than a few people were essentially saying: âWelcome to Hickory. Now go back to Colorado.â
But standing beside her car that afternoon, after helping a dog she cared deeply about, I found myself thinking something I hadnât thought during either of those three-hour public meetings.
Maybe I really was exactly where I was supposed to be. For someone who never planned to leave Colorado, that was a pretty powerful realization. Startling.
So thatâs how I got to Hickory.
Not because I was looking for a new adventure. Not because I wanted to leave a shelter, staff, Board, and community that I adored. And certainly not because I had some grand plan to start my career over at 67.
I came because life changed the plan. And when life changes the plan, you have two choices.
You can spend your time looking backward at what you left behind.
Or you can put your head down, move forward, and build something meaningful where youâve landed. Thatâs what Iâm trying to do here.
So every once in a while, life gives you a reminder that youâre on the right path. This Monday, that reminder came to me in the form of a kindhearted and meaningful hug.
Next week, Iâll answer more top questions asked of me, including "Why isnât Lynn here yet? And what got you into animal welfare?"
Warm regards, Doug
P.S. Jasmine says, "Don't forget to share this post to help grow our new page!!"đ
