b'Sammi and Thor Anna Marie Parish with a Corgi mix who came in as a strayMyth: Dogs in shelters are and had not been given a name.sick or injured. Reality: Most Dancing Their Way Into Ourdogs who enter a shelter are HeartsTwenty-four-year-oldSammiEfawstarteddancinghealthy. Those who have whenshewasthree.Shehashealth issues are treated beenwithAzaraBalletfor(within reason) by the shelter aboutayearnow,havingmovedfromOklahomaCity,or rescue groups.Oklahomaspecificallyforthedancetroupe.Shehasexperiencedjudgment within the dance world in dif-ferent aspects. Azara Ballet is changing theworld of ballet, Sammi told us. I like the inclusivity and how we areall so supportive of one another. There is no fear of doing somethingwrong. Sammi grew up with several dogs, and especially remembersCharlie, the family dog. She was great. We adopted her from a Malteserescue group when I was 12 years old. We think she was around 17years old when she recently passed away. At the moment, Sammi hastwo cats. Salem is a black cat and Winter is a Tabby. Her favorite Azara Ballet production so far was the inaugural sea-sons grand finale, Love Between Lines, an emotional LGBTQ+ inclusiveperformance that was live-streamed globally. It was four different sto-ries featuring different styles of dancing, she said.Sammi loves animals, and said that, as a family, they have alwaysadopted their pets from a shelter. A teacher put the importance of ani-mal adoption in Sammis head when she was in school. I rememberasking my teacher why she adopted her dogs, and she told me how dogswere often euthanized, explaining what that meant. After I heard that,I knew my family and I would always, always adopt our pets.Olivia Huseonica poses with a little stray whohad not been given a name.26 THE NEW BARKER www.TheNewBarker.com'