by Anne Cosgrove Wimberly
“It was a Tuesday morning in June 2022. I was gonna take my husband to work. As we got ready to go, this dog put his paws on the window. I freaked out. I told my husband, ‘Get him away, get him away, get him away!’ ”
Deb Mullins, a University of Denver employee who lives in Oklahoma City, suffers from cynophobia, an extreme fear of dogs. As a child, she was chased repeatedly by unfriendly German shepherds.
Her husband, Joshua Mullins, got out of the car to shoo away the tall, skinny dog. The dog didn’t bite, bark, or chase. He simply refused to leave the driveway.
“We didn’t have time for this,” Deb Mullins said, “so we put him behind the neighbor’s fence.” The neighbor had an area enclosed by chicken wire. Mullins decided it was better to keep the dog contained until she could call animal control rather than let him roam the streets.
After she dropped her husband off at work, she returned home to begin her workday. From her window, she could see the dog in her neighbor’s yard.
“He just looked at me with total submission,” Mullins recalled. She decided to search for the dog’s owner before calling animal control. She posted an alert on Nextdoor.com.
No one claimed the dog. Instead, strangers asked her not to call animal control. They wrote that the dog would have a high risk of being euthanized. They asked if she could keep the dog that had found his way to her driveway.
“I thought, ‘I don’t want anyone killing him,’ ” Mullins said. But she didn’t want to keep him either.
Discovering the Background
She and her husband took the dog for a walk at about 5 p.m. that evening. They met a woman who told them she had kept the dog in her backyard for two weeks. After discovering that the dog wasn’t microchipped, the woman unsuccessfully searched for his owner on social media. Then the dog escaped from her yard.
Mullins explained that she didn’t want to be a dog owner and that her neighbor couldn’t keep the dog behind the chicken-wire fence much longer. She asked the woman to take the dog back.
The woman refused. She owned six cats. She sensed that if the dog escaped once, he would escape again. She gave the Mullinses all the supplies she had bought for the dog, including a leash and food. She encouraged them to continue to search for his owner.
They walked the dog home but didn’t want him in their house. The neighbor once again agreed to keep him behind the fence. But if the owner wasn’t found soon, Mullins knew she was going to have to surrender the dog to a shelter or a rescue.
She shared the story of the tall, stinky dog with her mother-in-law, who believed that the dog had found Mullins for a reason. “He chose you,” she said. “He found you.”
Even though Mullins’ concern for the dog’s welfare grew, she wasn’t convinced that he should be a part of her family.
Tugging at the Heart
That night, a storm passed through Oklahoma City. By the time Mullins woke up, the dog was gone. She was worried. She ran out into the rain to search for him.
“My heart was already tugged by this dog,” she said.
A groomer at Groomer A Go-Go on Western Avenue found the dog. When Mullins went to greet the dog, she related her story to the groomer.
“The groomer said, ‘This dog found you. He chose you. He came to you,’ ” Mullins recalled. “I was really panicking. I had no bandwidth for this.”
Despite her fears, Mullins couldn’t stand to let the dog suffer. She relegated him to one room of her house because he smelled so bad. She took him to a veterinarian for a bath and checkup. She learned that he was an underfed 53-pound puppy, maybe only nine or 10 months old, possibly a shepherd or Great Dane mix. She followed all of the vet’s recommendations and turned to the Nextdoor application to seek advice on how to care for a dog. She asked about supplies, toys, training, feeding, and more. The response was incredible.
“People gave us information for dog routines, how to feed, how to sleep. People gave us beds, toys, bags of food, even crates!” Mullins laughed because the crates, even the extra large size, were too small for the long-legged dog.
The Mullinses named the dog Mula, a street word that means “money.” Mula has proven to be a financial and emotional investment. The Mullinses fenced in their yard and bought a larger car to accommodate Mula.
“My husband and I are introverts, so Mula helped us get to know people because we walk him. Now people stop to talk to us,” Mullins said.
Joining the Family
Mula is now a 120-pound healthy, loyal, loving, and joyful member of the Mullins family. Mullins had a harness made for Mula that reads, “Pet me. I love love.” Mula, under Mullins’ tutelage, serves as an ambassador to help dispel myths about shepherds and large dogs. Their mission is to help other people overcome cynophobia.
Mullins is glad that Mula parked himself in her driveway on that fateful day in June 2022. Strangers, her mother-in-law, and the groomer were right on the money — Mula found her for a reason. They give each other confidence, love, and purpose.
