Dog tails

Today I picked out my puppy. Baby Cassandra is three weeks old and weighs four pounds. It shouldn’t be possible to tell anything about her at all, but somehow both the breeder and I know she is the right puppy. Pix to come soon, but for now, enjoy this half-sibling who had the same father but a different mother.

Earlier in the day, Max went to the vet and had his mite infestation officially declared as cured. We will watch carefully for a few days as he comes off the antibiotics. For eleven-year-old dogs with artificial hips, the slightest injury can be life threatening. Puppy or no puppy, we want to keep Max around as long as he is a happy dog. And Max is generally a happy dog.

One exception this morning. Max enjoys going everywhere, even the vet, and he greeted the receptionist and the lab tech with his usual élan. But when Dr. Paula came in the room, he lay down on the floor, curled into a ball and refused even to look at her. I was surprised at this reaction until she explained that she had just come from putting down someone else’s beloved old dog. “I’m feeling a little sad,” she confided, “and you would be surprised at how some dogs pick up on that.” Surprised, no. Max has always been a intuitive creature.

We walked back out front, and Max wagged his tail and said hello to the next person through the door, all sadness evaporated from his doggy world. Toby, meanwhile, was inconsolable that we would have gone somewhere in the car—just the two of us—without him. But intuition reigns at my house. This morning I came downstairs to find my most recent knitting project wrapped up and down the stairs, Toby's commentary on the state of affairs at our house: "Puppies? We don’t need no stinking puppies..."