And the Winner Is…Bastian!

HE WAS PULLED FROM THE FLOODWATERS OF A HURRICANE. NOW THIS RESILIENT RAT TERRIER MIX IS THRIVING WITH JOYFUL CONFIDENCE

- KELLI BENDER,SHAINA FISHMAN

While searching for her first dog, Joelle Andres saw a photo of a scrappy-looking rat terrier on a pet adoption site and was immediately drawn to his face. “His eyes were very soulful, but he looked kind of shut down and forlorn,” she says. She quickly put in an application but learned the pup was on his way to an adoption event she couldn’t attend because of a wedding the same weekend. Andres, 41, accepted that the pup named Bastian would likely find a different home, so she was surprised when Burlington County Animal Alliance of New Jersey contacted her and said Bastian was the only pet not adopted at the event. Upon hearing this, Andres, a special-education administrator who lives in Levittown, N.Y., drove hours through torrential rain to meet Bastian in person. “He was just a little, sad, skinny boy. I held him, and I was like, ‘That’s it. You’re coming home with me,’” she says of adopting him in October 2018.

Like Andres, thousands of voters in