*
[Cheerful music]
- Narrator: Meet Sotiris, or "Soto" for short.
Soto was born with a retinal defect
that left him blind.
That would scare away some potential pet owners,
but not Cassidy Kraus.
- Soto I had adopted and rescued
out of the shelter here in Milwaukee
where I was volunteering
in 2013, May 2013.
And he was wonderful.
We lived alone for a while.
I met Brett and then we started dating.
- Soto now lives with Cassidy and her boyfriend, Brett Weyers,
in Milwaukee.
They were a happy family,
but in early 2016,
Brett came down with puppy fever.
The cure?
Another dog adoption!
- She told me, "You know,
"let's look close, like close to Milwaukee.
"Let's try and stay in the area,
"so we don't have to go very far."
- They looked online for a dog to rescue,
and that's where their story becomes quite the tale.
- She goes, "I found the perfect dog for us."
I go, "Awesome, sweet!
"When can we-- Let's go see him this weekend!"
And she kind of looks at me and she goes...
"Ahh."
and I go, "Oh, great.
"This is going to be real good."
He's in Sacramento, California.
- This is Batty.
Like Soto, a birth defect left him blind.
He was also abandoned at an animal shelter.
It just happened to be 2,000 miles from Wisconsin.
The shelter told Cassidy and Brett they could adopt Batty,
but they had to drive to Sacramento
and bring Soto with them. - Brett: So, we did.
- We made that awful drive.
- 36 hours one-way.
- They rearranged their work schedules
to make a 4-day road trip across the country.
[Circus music] - It was...
- It was the worst road trip ever.
- It was bad. [Music distorts]
- First stop, the emergency room.
- Eight hours in, we stopped to get food.
I got food poisoning.
- Then we were like, "Is this a bad omen?
"Should we turn around?
"Is this a bad sign that we shouldn't be doing this?"
"No, we're going to do it."
- Next, they'd dodged tire shrapnel in Wyoming.
- I'm asleep and just get jolted awake
as she slams on the brakes and screams.
I wake up and here's this semi in front of us,
but one of the tires exploded.
And here's all these rubber shrapnels coming at us.
- Oh, it was not good.
- Then we're like, "Is that another sign?"
We were like, "Nope, let's keep going."
[Both chuckle] [Chaotic music]
- Even Mother Nature refused to throw them a bone.
- We hit a snowstorm in Tahoe.
- Cassidy Kraus: That was bad.
- All of this, and there was no guarantee
Soto and Batty would even get along.
- I had so much anxiety that we would have driven all that way
and they wouldn't have clicked.
Oh God, I was sick to my stomach.
- It was a once in a lifetime adventure.
Cassidy and Brett made it to Sacramento.
The moment of truth had arrived.
Batty and Soto met for the first time.
- The meet and greet went flawless.
- Here he comes bouncing around the corner
and I'm like, "Oh, this dog is-- This is perfect."
- The two dogs would become fast friends.
Cassidy and Brett changed Batty's name
to Agios, Ago for short,
and brought him home to Milwaukee.
Ago learned to fit in with his new family,
where to sleep on the couch,
and of course, how to root for the Packers.
- Want to run some more?
Do you have more energy now that you've been sitting?
- Cassidy and Brett learned that while love is blind,
it can also give you pause.
Sometimes, four of them.
- People have this stigma around handicapped dogs.
Blind, deaf, incontinent, whatever it may be.
That they're hard and they're not worth it.
And it is such the opposite.
- I can't even describe how much we love both of them
and how happy we are that we made that 36 hours.
- It was the best chaotic decision we have ever made.
- Yeah. - By far.
*