Puppy Days

Hello to you. Have you met this new puppy? His name is Durango, and he resides, cutely—and with sharp teeth, at my house on 57th Street.

What happened was, I couldn't stand the quiet. I'd come home to the most awful stillness, a house full of nothing but air molecules, of lonesome mental tumbleweeds rolling across the hardwood floors. Life, in the end, is just more life-y with a dog in it.

And so squarely one month after Lefty died, Mark and I took a little trip out to the Yakama Nation in Eastern Washington, where stray dogs are everywhere, anywhere. There, we picked up a little dude, a mystery mutt straight off the rez—part border collie, part boxer, part ???? Maybe panda? Or raccoon? It's all possible.

A note about baby dogs. I'd forgotten that you have to teach them everything. They don't know how to go on walks. They don't know how to climb up or down stairs. They don't know how to fetch a ball. We think that stuff comes naturally, instinctually, but in fact, every last thing is brand new to a wild animal who spent his first weeks living all feral on a concrete slab.

Anyway, here's to a house full of paw patter, here's to wagging tails and wiping pee, here's to slow morning walks holding fast to the leash like it's the end of a kite string in a tornado. I love it all.