Dark angel

Maman's dark angel

Doug's right. She does look sweet, but she does also look like she's saying, "Maman, why are you doing this to me?" I don't think she gets her first Halloween any more than Sam did his at 3 weeks old. The difference was that Sam finally got it, while Fia isn't likely to. Besides, she can't have the chocolate. She'll have to give it to us.

I made all his costumes, from the first one, which was a tiger spotted pajama and a mask in gold paper I made before leaving the office that day -- cutting the eye holes precisely the right width apart the first time so that his little eyes gazed out at the world through them, that's how strong an imprint a baby's face makes on his mother's mind --, to the last, which I cannot remember. How can that be? There was the little devil when he was one, Max from Where the Wild Things Are when he was three, the velvet spider when he was four, his first Tuxedo and a gorgeous black wool cape with red satin lining I made him for his Dracula costume his kindergarten year, when he was five.

There was the failed next Halloween, when he dressed up as Darth Vader and refused to trick or treat. We stood with his grandfather in the street in Old Greenwich, while the children flowed past us in the clear October night, light streaming from the Jack O'Lanterns and doors where the grown-ups who stayed at home handed out candy. I thought it was because we had moved that summer from our old neighborhood near where we were trick or treating to our new apartment in the center of Greenwich. Perhaps Sam felt like a six-year-old interloper, but he swore years later that it really was because the Darth Vader mask he had wanted so much blinded and smothered him, even after we punched the film out of the eye-holes. That had ruined his Halloween.

It was because I hadn't made the costume. That's what it was.

Then, there was James Bond. He wanted to wear a tuxedo again.

But there were two other Halloweens, as well as the one when he was two. How can I forget? I remember what Kyle wore that last Halloween in Greenwich to the International School at Dundee Halloween party. He dressed as an old man. I found him sitting at the side of the gym, while the others all played the games the parents had set up.

"Kyle," I said, surprised to see him sitting there alone, his large plaid shirt covered tummy hanging over the belt buckle at his trouser tops, "what are you doing sitting there?" He grinned at me.

"I'm resting."

Ah, I smiled back, "Old men get tired easily." He nodded, a very slight smile where his lips met the corner of his powdered skin. No wonder he's at SCAD, studying film directing. We all knew that was coming when he was Robin Hood at Sam's 5th birthday party and took his bow and arrows so seriously, redistributing the party favors more equitably. No one dared refuse.

I joke. About the party favor redistribution. Everyone was rich except Sam and I, and it was his birthday so he did pretty well. About Kyle, we really did all know what his future would hold.

Still, I cannot remember those last two Halloweens. I must not have made those costumes, but I have no excuse for the second one, when he was two, other than so many years having passed. Fia will be the first pet to have a Halloween costume. I was too nervous with Baccarat, and God only knows you don't dress up a car.

It was hard being a first-time puppy owner, and it was all I could do to survive the recall command training. Baccarat did as she pleased more often than I like to admit, until the last year of her far too brief life, by which time she had decided to take a charitable attitude with me. I am pretty sure she regretted having been such a challenge once she saw how destroyed I was by her being so sick and having to leave us. Or not. It is not a dog's way to regret anything.

This time, however, I am doing exactly what I knew I could once Baccarat had to leave us; I decided to let Baccarat help me and relax and just have fun this time, and, here it is, Halloween time. Fall has touched the leaves and turned them gold, the pumpkins are in the stores and pots of chrysanthemums in deep purple, yellow and maroon are flying out of them, and my favorite holiday is here again. I heard myself clear her throat and speak.

A costume for Fia. Why not make a costume for little Fia Lux de la Pellousery? That would be fun, wouldn't it? You haven't made one for such a long time.

I thought about it, and an idea came to me before she had even come home from the breeder's.

"A devil. I can make a devil costume for the diablotin."

That's not really very fair, is it? asked myself. I mean, she hasn't even had a chance to misbehave or to prove herself difficult, and here you are thinking of her as a little devil.

It was true. I acknowledged it, and her first 2 weeks at home made me feel even worse about it. She actually wasn't a diablotin at all. Maybe for her second Halloween.

It was the devil wings Doug brought up the other day that got me thinking. Or maybe it was because I was already thinking of making the angel costume and needed wings that he thought of telling Fia that devil's have wings, too.

I forget a lot of things these days. Soon I will need to sit and rest along the gym wall and watch the young 'uns have their fun.

But, it started to come together. I would make Fia angel wings and a halo. Fia is a Scottish name that means "arising from a dark peace" or "dark fairy". It would be perfect for her. I would only need to go to Truffaut again -- I had already gotten more red felt for a cape and some nifty red felt hearts in a chain I thought I could attach to her collar, as a gesture, you know, of her being really pretty good -- and get some stuff. I attached Fia's leash to her and tried to be very authoritative to get her to follow me to the damn car. When she got a whiff of where we were headed, she balked -- in the middle of the road.

I don't know why she doesn't like to get in the car. We do such fun things when we go places, and she gets to be with me.

We went first to the bank and deposited some money in the poor bank account and then went to the vet to weigh her for her 12 week birthday. 6 kgs! That's another kilo in the last week. She's still littler than Baccarat was at 8 weeks, but there were twice as many puppies in her littler. She'll catch up. Then, we drove over to Truffaut and Fia got in her place in the cart. I had some pheasant food to return for the pheasant I found limping in the road Sunday night, on my way home from dropping Sam at the train station, who didn't stay for breakfast; as well as things to pick up for her costume.

-- I had managed to get it out from behind an old mattress, propped against a stone wall, behind which it had taken refuge from my terrifying approach -- it was that or let the hunters shoot it in the middle of the Grande Rue the next day -- and take it home, where Audouin made it a dry leaf nest in the big black plastic tub I bought for the frogs back when we had to empty the old fountain of fish, frogs, plants and water to repair it. The next morning, I had gone over to Truffaut for some pheasant food and a water distributor, but when I removed the wood planks from the top of the tub, it found the strength it had lacked the previous night to take off at full wingspan, nearly knocking me over backwards and pooping all over Rapide in the process of taking flight. Audouin's daughter had nearly fallen over backwards from laughter --

We approached the accueil, and the security guy turned around to see who was approaching. A smile crept over his face when he saw the small black dog in the basket, and he glanced up at me, my new used Nikon D300 hanging around my neck. The cashier looked up and smiled, too.

"Je peux avoir cet appareil de photo?" he asked, breaking into a chuckle.

"Ca, non," I told him, "mais je prendrai votre photo," I offered. He laughed. I explained that I needed to make a return before doing my shopping, and he got the cashier's attention, who looked at the bag of pheasant food and the plastic drinking apparatus I was returning, along with a bag of ProPlan puppy food (Orijen this time, for both dogs).

"Quel est le problème avec ces produits?" asked the nice cashier.

"Bon, les produits sont très bien, mais le faisan blessé que j'ai accueilli est parti avant le petit déj, alors il paraîtrait qu'il ne soit si blessé que ça finalement," I replied. She laughed and wrote up the slip for me to take to have signed while the security guy went to see Fia.

"Allez," I said, "Je vous ai dit que je prendrais votre photo, alors!"

I lifted the camera up in front of my face -- the only way I can really see the world and my loved ones --, and he laughed out loud, delighted, while I snapped his picture with Fia, and then he walked me back to the animal supply department for the signature.

"Vous êtes anglaise d'origine?" he asked me as we walked to the back of the store, me pushing Fia in the cart.

"Non, américaine."

"Ah!" he turned and smiled at me. "Moi, je suis marocain d'origine. Vous savez qui était le premier à reconnaître les EtasèUnis?" he asked.

"Le Maroc?"

"Oui!," he said, beaming at me as we turned the corner into the animal needs department. I smiled back. Fia looked around. I hoped she wouldn't ask for a new collar or toy.

We stopped in front of the display of aquarium supplies, including the sea salt I had used to save George the Koi's life.

"Vous êtes photographe?" he asked me.

"Oh! Non! Non, je suis architecte, mais j'adore la photographie, et j'écris."

I sort of made the last part up. It makes me feel better about not doing any architecture, except the house renovation that I ignore and put off as much as possible.

"J'ai fais de la photographie," he told me. He had done weddings, until staying out every weekend night until 6 am cured him of his desire to be a photographer. Of weddings, anyway. I thought of the story another friend had told me, about when he worked for a newspaper and someone had borrowed the Mamiya to photograph a friend's wedding. When he'd opened the camera, he discovered the film hadn't caught and every time he had advanced and shot a photo, he'd been shooting on air.

No wedding pictures.

I'd done that, but never for anything like a wedding.

He got my signature, I ran into the employee who had told me that George the Koi was good for a plastic bag in the freezer and told him I'd been on the look-out for him to tell him the good news -- isolation in a 3% salt solution and the Baytril Nifurpirinol antibiotic tablets another employee had said wouldn't work did work, and then I went off to scout what was on hand in the arts and crafts section to make Fia's costume. We found wire, black tissue paper, silver star confetti (for her halo), black feathers, and a hot glue gun and the glue sticks for it, and then we went off to look for a garland, the only reason I could be happy to see Christmas decorations before all the leaves had turned, for her halo.

I found a pink boa with silver flecks and the security guy, who told me the rest of the Christmas stuff would be available for shopping the next day. I touched the pink and silver boa, the question Who would put this on their Christmas tree? flying through my head right before the joy of having found the perfect accessory for a dark angel.

"Non! C'est très bien, " I said, looking around me, reaching for the pink and silver boa. "Elle doit avoir ça!" I said, wrapping it around and around her small neck. It was perfect! "Elle devrait toujours porter ça au lieu d'un collier!" I added, laughing.

He wanted to know if I sold my cameras. I told him all about eBay and went back to arts and crafts for something to decorate the pipe cleaners I'd decided on the spot I'd make into her halo instead of a garland, and stopping along the way to chat with more dog owners and small children in my joyful delirium. I found silver star confetti. How absolutely perfect! This was such fun!

Fia was looking -- like she was having less fun. We went and got in the car.



Halloween is definitely for kids and parents.
....

Taking her place

Fia and Rapide

Not even three weeks have gone by since Sam and I went to get Fia from the breeder near Luigny, but it feels like she has been with us for a much longer time. She is only 12 weeks old tomorrow, and yet I can nearly let my breath out when she is not in her gated area now, not having had an accident for several days. Oh, I take her out often, sticking to the *schedule I once found on a California Italian Greyhound rescue site. They provide a wonderful explanation of crate and house training, and I swear by it. It saved me the first time with Baccarat, and it is making this second time with Fia Lux a song.

Never make the mistake of thinking that crates, or a similar arrangement like I have made, gating off a small corner of the kitchen, are mean. Crates are kind to everyone, and they really and truly help make for a well-behaved, well-adjusted dog and an excellent mistress-dog relationship. To shun crates as unkind and unfeeling would be something like leaving your baby to sleep without a bed, play without a safe area and deny her diapers. You just wouldn't do it. For you or your baby.

After just two and a half weeks, Fia can spend more time out of her gated-off area and goes to the door when I say "Fia fait pipi?", and she goes nearly right away when I take her to her toileting place. No messing around. No shenanigans.

We have also been working at basic finishing school course work. Fia goes into her gated-off area and sits when I bring her food dish. She looks at me and waits for me to say "Okay, Fia" before beginning to eat. She is learning that she must sit to have her leash removed and wait until I tell her she can leave my side. This is not quite perfected. Especially if Rapide is nearby. She walks better on leash, but she is still pig-headed and requires me to play the tree more than suits me, but she is young, and trees are nice.

The whole world is her friend, and she and Rapide are inseparable when she is not in her little area. Except for when she is being inseparable with me, like right now, under my place on the other sofa; I changed sofas to mix things up a bit, and my neighbor lent me a much better heating pad you heat in the microwave (on high, for 3 or 4 minutes). Or playing beautifully by herself. They play, they lie side by side, Fia lies across Rapide's front paws and they lick each other's faces and ears or show each other their fangs and growl, nipping. It was right to get a new puppy for us and for Rapide, who is likely to live longer for the rejuvenating effect, if she doesn't have a heart attack first. The vet said her heart is in tip-top shape, though. Happy Rapide. I bored her to tears.

She is such a beautiful, beautiful dog.

Fière de ta race, ma Rapide.
....

*EX-PEN PLAY/POTTY SCHEDULE for puppies 7 to 14-16 weeks

___ 07:00 Wake up/Go out
___ 07:15 Free period
___ 07:30 Food & Water/Confine
___ 09:00 Go out
___ 09:15 Free period
___ 09:45 Confine
___ 11:00 Go out
___ 11:15 Free period
___ 11:40 Confine
___ 12:30 Food & Water
___ 01:00 Go out
___ 01:15 Free period
___ 01:45 Confine
___ 03:00 Go out
___ 03:15 Free period
___ 03:45 Confine
___ 04:45 Water
___ 05:00 Go out
___ 05:15 Free period
___ 05:45 Confine
___ 06:45 Food & Water
___ 07:00 Go out
___ 07:15 Free period
___ 07:45 Confine
___ 08:45 Water
___ 09:00 Go out
___ 09:15 Free Period
___ 09:45 Confine
___10:45 Water
___11:00 Go out/Confine overnight

CRATE TRAINING SCHEDULE for 14-16 weeks - 6 month old pups/ 3 meals per day

____ 07:00 Wake up/Go out
____ 07:10 Free period
____ 07:30 Food & Water
____ 08:00 Go out
____ 08:15 Free period
____ 08:45 Confine
____ 12:00 Food & Water
____ 12:30 Go out
____ 12:45 Free period
____ 01:15 Confine
____ 04:30 Food & Water
____ 05:00 Go out
____ 05:15 Free period
____ 05:45 Confine
____ 08:00 Water
____ 08:15 Go out
____ 08:30 Free period
____ 09:00 Confine
____ 11:00 Go out/Confine overnight

CRATE TRAINING SCHEDULE for 6 - 18 mo. old pups or untrained adults (2 meals per day)

____ 07:00 Wake up/Go out
____ 07:15 Free period
____ 08:00 Food & Water
____ 08:30 Go out
____ 08:45 Free period
____ 09:30 Confine
____ 12:30 Water & Go out
____ 12:45 Free period
____ 01:45 Confine
____ 05:00 Food & Water
____ 05:30 Go out
____ 05:45 Free period
____ 07:30 Confine
____ 11:00 Go out/Confine overnight

SCHEDULE for HOUSE TRAINED ADULT DOGS/ 2 meals per day

____ 07:00 Wake up/Go out
____ 08:00 Food & Unlimited water
____ 08:30 Optional- if your dog didn't poop when it went out earlier in may need to go out again
____ 12:30 Go out
____ 05:30 Food
____ 06:00 Go out
____ 11:00 Go out/Bedtime/Remove water overnight.

A concession to Maria

The Tulip tree

It is perfectly quiet. There is only the sound of the logs burning in the wood stove and Rapide's soft snoring to mask the only other possible sound, besides my fingers tap-tap-tapping on the keyboard: Shadow's fireside bath.

Fia is napping in her corner of the kitchen, and the leaves are turning yellow, rust and gold out in the garden, past the French window. I am stuck on the sofa, mostly, having strained the left dorsal lifting a bag of old concrete, sand and dirt that had soaked up too much of the recent heavy rains out in the still unfinished courette d'entrée. My husband had decided that we were at least finally getting rid of the latest impressive crop of plastic bags, filled just to the point where I could still carry them from one end of the uppermost terrace to the other end 20 meters away near the gate, were -- they sat. For a good long moment.

I had other things to do.

It started out a just little pain. The kind of pain that ask that you take but polite, slight notice of it, making a little wince of annoyance when you turn or go to lift the dishes to set the table, which you do because your husband's attention span does not permit him to get further than the place mats, the plates and a couple of glasses before he gets distracted by the television between the verres à pieds and the water glasses for the kids and the silverware.

"On a besoin de couteaux?" he asks when he eventually returns. Every time.

"On a toujours besoin de couteaux," I reply -- every time --, and then he wanders off again to stand in front of the television. Returning, he notes the completed glasses and the silverware.

"Ah! Mais tu l'as fini!," he exclaims with enough étonnement in his voice to convince you he really is still surprised -- every time -- that he has been gone long enough for you to complete the job. "J'allais revenir le finir, tu sais," he adds for good measure.

"Oui," I tell him -- every time--, "je le sais."

It was after lunch when I couldn't move any more. The pain came on progressively as I struggled to bend my knees to pick up light things I could limp over to the car, while he loaded it for the dump runs, expanding to include an ever larger area of the left side of my back until it spasmed, stopping me in the middle of an attempt to rise from the sofa, where I had finally retreated to watch the beginning of the women's Masters tournament. It hurt to gasp in pain.

Maria was maybe a little bit right. I suspected it had really all begun when I was raking the ivy up the flames to get it all to turn to ash the evening before. Rakes are back killers. Not, of course, that I plan on heeding Maria's admonishments. Little enough gets done around here. If I waited for my husband to take his next days off from the hospital, never mind.

"Je sais," said my husband, on a trip through the house. He used to specialize in what the French still call quaintly, I have remarked before in this blog, lumbago, until I got him to start working with my personal trainer, who is a genius. Unfortunately, he is also working at opening his own training center right now, and we're on our own.

Lumbago. It sounds like it should be part of a stew, or a beach dance at Club Med.

He had things to do, however, before he could get to the pharmacie, like take a shower.

"J'ai envie d'une douche," he pronounced in a tone I dared not contradict, despite my pain. "Je me sens sal, et je voudrais prendre une douche avant de partir."

I considered this, and it seemed to me that if I were planning on asking him to be my slave all evening, it might be right to let him have a shower before I started with my requests from the sofa. Besides, I had taught Lamaze. I knew how to breathe through the pain, and a yoga class or two had taught me to breath to the muscle screaming at me.

By the time I had taken two Aleve, rested several hours with the hot compress against my offended muscle and had the muscle relaxing ointment rubbed into it, I was moving around again like an agile and spritely old woman.

"Regards!" I said brightly to my husband, seated at the end of the dining table in front of his solitaire game, his face lit by his computer screen. He looked up and watched me approach, upright (I had earlier taken 5 minutes to cross the living room on elbows and knees, keening like the gypsy women in the Métro with their poor, drugged babies and young children). "J'ai regagné au moins 80% de mon mouvement!"

"Attention," he cautioned me. "N'en fais pas trop. C'est l'Aleve." It was, he said, the Aleve that was making me as spry as a 90-year-old former martial arts professional with mild arthritis, and I'd only do more damage to the muscle if I lost sight of this precious fact. I crept back to my place on the sofa and stayed very still until bedtime, when I took another.

Today, I let the 12 hours pass, just, you know, to see what would happen. A muscle spasm reaching for my laptop sent me creeping for the box and a glass of water.

Today's program: canceled.

At least there are no more sacs of sodden stuff in the courtyard, and now you must excuse me. It's time to take Mlle Fia Lux out to faire pipi and then settle on the sofa for Doha.
....

My Nikon 300D

Fia

11 weeks old, and 2 weeks here in her home. It was quiet. I looked at my watch. 3:50 pm. I ought to have put her in her gated-off area 5 minutes before. I got up from where I was sitting, photoshopping another batch of photographs I have shot with Sam's Canon EOS Rebel Xti and glanced toward Rapide's bed. No Fia.

I looked under the dining table, where she sometimes goes to lie amongst the chair legs. No Fia.

I bent to look where she often fell asleep her first week home, under the sofa below where I sat. No Fia.

I started to get a little worried. There was no movement, and she was in none of her usual places. I walked farther towards the kitchen, and I saw black on the fleece blanket covering her cushion behind the gate. I leave it open so that she can choose to go there when she is free to roam, and for the first time, she had gone there all by herself, and curled up to faire dodo.

The indescribable joy when something works the way it is supposed to.

Yesterday, Fia helped me close the pool. After her mésaventure the previous week, falling in twice, not grasping what a corner means, I wasn't certain she'd agree to spend even 5 minutes anywhere near the pool. For several days after, the second I put her down at the bottom of the garden stairs and went to purge the pump, she'd be gone straight back up them. I'd find her just inside the living room door, waiting. But, she did. She trotted around the poolside, sniffing away, and snatched the skimmer basket I had just removed and emptied, darting away with it in her mouth, zig-zagging across the grass, unable to see where she was going for the big white thing she was not about to relinquish.

"Apporte, Fia. Apporte."

Right.

It does work. Sometimes. But she is getting really serious about "assis" ("sit") and is actually showing a faint sign of progress with "reste" ("stay"). The idea is to put the two together for "reste assis" until I give the sign "okay", then she can get up/eat/leave my side.




Today, Sam brought the used Nikon D300 I bought on eBay and that he picked up in Paris for me. Now, I just have to find my Nikkor lenses and reassure myself they really do work. They're not VF, but having become irrelevant to everyone except my dogs, garden and immediate family, and having no business that brings in income, I must be patient. Only, having discovered what a really good digital camera means -- you can take photographs that you could not otherwise dream of taking --, and knowing I will only have so many puppies in my life, at least this much was indispensable, but maybe I'll study and practice and offer pet portrait photography.

That's a job, right?

Meanwhile, my back-ordered copy of Sean Ellis' Kubrick the Dog arrived today from Amazon.co.uk.

"What's that book?" asked Sam, who had just arrived home from the train, picking it up to look at the photos.

"It's a book the fashion photographer and filmmaker Sean Ellis made of his Vizsla, Kubrick. My books about Baccarat are just like it!" I said, feeling rather proud and excited, "Well, minus Stella McCartney and top models at lingerie shoots," I conceded. Sam continued turning the pages.

"His photos are really good, Mom," he replied. There was just the slightest, almost imperceptible emphasis on "his". Only the introductory "but" was missing. Sam is considerate.

"Yeah, well, I didn't have a camera like he does." Now I almost do.

Where are those lenses?
....

The incredible sweetness of dogs

Growing up, growing closer

It is incredibly sweet to watch Rapide lower her head to accept the caresses and care of Fia's little tongue, cleaning Rapide's eyes, her ears, becoming playful, her very small and still pointier teeth nibbling at the loose folds of skin at Rapide's neck, and then to watch Rapide press her muzzle against that very small dog, a baby, and work if down the length of her body, sniffing, taking in Fia's scent as though to memorize her.

Fia, in this way I will know you, and I will always be able to find you when you are not near, or when you stray.

What do we know of dogs and of their hearts, I wonder. What did Rapide feel when she left Trevira with Baccarat and came here to live? Did she feel the happiness my husband imagined for her when he said "Oui, on la prendra aussi" in answer to the breeder's offer to have the mother, as well, for the price of her daughter? And when Baccarat was lost to us, did Rapide know of her death? Did she know that she must die, knowing that she was so sick? Some have said to me that dogs can smell cancer. I hope that Rapide could smell cancer, and I hope that this means that they can smell the approach of death and set themselves to the idea of loss else it is too terrible a surprise. Now, this little one has left her mother, Camée, and her brothers and her sisters, and come to live with us and this mother, Rapide, who lost her daughter.

"Elle n'a jamais été malheureuse," remarked my husband, and I wondered at him. Ought she have been unhappy in so short a life? "Je veux dire, elle n'a jamais pleuré depuis qu'elle est venue."

Ah. I understood. He was saying that he had expected her to feel sad to leave what she had known, the warmth, companionship and comfort of her own mother and fratrie, but she had not shown any signs of this, and it was true: she had not. She had gotten into the car on her own, like she had been doing it every day of her young life, and rode away with Sam and I, content. She sat at my feet and looked around, up out the window at the sky and the treetops, the buildings high enough for her to see when we passed through villages and skirted cities. And, she got out of the car and came straight in to meet her new companions, her new life, and settled right in as though she had fully expected it all to be just that way.

No, Fia never has felt sad, and she and Rapide have been playing at my feet the last half hour without stop, as engaged in one another as though this little dog came from Rapide and had always been hers. I have not had many dogs in my life, and so nearly everything is a discovery to me. Maybe it is always this way for a bitch who was comfortable being mounted and cared with great patience and tenderness for her puppies. This was what her breeder had told me, and I have never seen anything to indicate that this is not absolutely true. She might have lacked elsewhere, but not in this. Camée is the same. Perhaps it is not always true for such a dog, but it is so with Rapide, and Fia enjoys the full benefit of human and canine attention and care, as well as knowing already how, at just 11 weeks of age, to offer it herself.

I like to say that she is in the TAG program for crate and house training, but it is more than that. At 9 to 10 weeks, Fia would sit if I told her "assis". Granted, her hindquarters did not stay on the ground for long. That's fine. That will come. They already do a little more now. She is learning that to have her leash removed, she must sit, and that "okay" means she is free to leave my feet. Not that she is really waiting, yet, but while she is busy scratching at her collar after sitting, I say "okay" (to give her the idea of the business to come), and she scampers to race me to the door, or to catch up with Rapide, if she has come out with us.

I have learned one very important thing: the dog trainers are right when they say to work with your dog alone. Baccarat and Rapide were nearly never separated. Baccarat learned, but slowly, and she was distracted -- naturally -- by Rapide's unbridled presence. I had decided not long after her arrival that she was as thick as the French Toast made of slabs of Challah bread on the Lower East Side and didn't pursue her further development and education. Of course, I realized once Baccarat was gone that Rapide, too, was capable of learning more than anyone had ever taught her, which amounted to never enter a door before anyone else, never get in anyone's feet if you can possibly help it, and never touch anyone else's food bowl, most particularly not the cats', and always walk on the sidewalk, if there is one available.

Now, I take Fia out alone to relieve herself and to teach her the routines and basic commands. I ask for and receive her attention. I call her back to me, even when she is on leash and trying to tug to head where she wants to go, and she comes. Off leash, I call her, and she dashes to me as though Usain Bolt were about to show her up. Again. I reward her with caresses and cuddles and murmurings, and she turns those eyes up to me to look into mine.

"Elle a l'allure de Baccarat," said Audouin, looking at a picture of her one eye looking up at me through the bars of her gate. She does.

He is less prone to seeing what he wishes to, in his opinion, but who knows. Perhaps we are both seeing what every dog owner sees. I'd believe it, but that's not what they told me at the Ecole nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort when Baccarat was there and the doctors, interns and the students told me that she had a remarkable expressiveness in her eyes. A look from Baccarat spoke paragraphs, or very pregnant sentences. I wonder if it is luck that this is true of Fia, or if it is because they do share bloodlines. I know that the best breeders do not consider only beauty, they work to maintain the disposition and the character of the breed, so perhaps it is not an accident. Sam and I had met another dog at the same breeder's, and she did not speak to us. The breeder mentioned the kennels in her bloodlines and then those of the little puppy she had brought to us. I heard the same dogs as Rapide and Baccarat, and Sam got out my camera. We would take her, but was it a form of superstition, or was the reason for our preference well-founded?

Who knows the truth of all of these things, except to see that mourning has no set time period, and protracting it has no particular value. You do not replace a dog, but you do not live with a hole in your life either, when absence speaks only of the pain of loss and brings more sadness. You can bring another being into your life for which to care and to teach and to let her make you laugh with delight and smile upon one another to share it.

Regards! Rapide joue avec elle!

Regards! Elle dort avec Rapide!

Regards! Shadow l'a laissée venir dormir avec elle!

Regards! Elle est assez grande maintenant de boire du bassin!

Regards ce regard précieux. On dirait Baccarat.

Oui, on dirait Baccarat, but we are loving Fia, while remembering and loving Baccarat still.
....

Women's work

The ivy burns

"That's no work for a woman," my elderly Portuguese neighbor stated firmly.

Her companion, a neighbor from her end of the street nodded, or smiled, in something vaguely resembling assent, and I felt as though I should stop immediately what I was doing and go take a shower and put on a dress. A little powder and lipstick.

Maria had told me this the day before, when she had first been on her way up the lane to collect walnuts from the tree in her garden, bordering the fields beyond our bottom garden and the lane. I considered whether she said this with disapprobation or sympathy, but since my husband was not next to me to defend himself in the latter case (or the former), I decided it was up to my to stand up for my honor, which was possibly, almost certainly, as much in question as his own. I chose to smile and reply with alarming candidness.

"Oui, mais mon mari --" I thought of him, working at the hospital, and myself at home, doing as I pleased and what needed to be done by someone, "il a autres choses à faire."

Her companion smiled, and nodded. I thought I had found an ally, someone who understood that someone had to earn a living around here, but I thought I'd add for good measure and to make sure my case was plead, "Quelqu'un doit travailler pour gagner la vie, et un jardinier pour faire ce travail, ben, c'est cher," and suddenly worried that I had brought us too low in their estimation, I hastened to add, "et puis, ils ne font souvent pas ni aussi bien que soi ni comme on veut." I finished with a brilliant smile and brandished my long handled pruning shears to go at the seriously overgrown ivy again.

Maria did not look convinced and continued to grumble amiably enough under her breath about work "fitting a woman" and this being "too much for a woman."

Later, my husband heard the incident and said, "Elles ne te connaissent pas évidemment."

I am not certain that that would have helped my image any more, either.

And was that what I was expecting when I left Barnard and the Ivy League with my diplomas all those years ago, my feminism shining, my certitude in my brilliant future even more radiant, until it came time to look for a first job, anyway, to arrive in this ivy jungle, where I prune and burn the garden's excess growth for my doctor husband, raise my puppies and care for my animals, bury even the wild ones who come here to die, and penning what amounts to a public journal to keep myself from wandering past the irretrievable edge?

He tells me, "Do whatever you like. All I ask is that you be content in return with what I can earn, and that you be happy," and he means it honestly, but he is happiest when I am involved with and kind to his plentiful offspring.

I can tell you about this woman's work, but I can also tell you about Maria's, a woman who spent her life tending to her neighbors' housecleaning and ironing for small pay, caring for her husband and children for none, and mourning the one who lay as peacefully before her eyes on the pavement, his school bag knocked from his small arms, as he had only moments before in his bed, hit by a car while he waited for the school bus to come.

I imagined I would hire someone like Maria to do the woman's work, while I went to the office, kissing my children good-bye and leaving detailed and enlightened instructions for their excellent care so that I could do the same at the office to get office towers and museums, airports and schools, or at least homes, built. Would she have looked at me disapprovingly for that, too? Was my life really so much harder in her eyes, cutting out all that overgrown ivy and dragging it to a monstrously large pile, than her own? What is the difference between a constantly replenishing mountain of someone else's laundry and your own to iron and a constantly replenishing mountain of ivy to cut back, and your own mountain of laundry to do, as well?

What, Maria, is a woman's work?

All the ivy is on the burning pile, which is sending a thick column of smoke into the drizzly October sky. The season to burn has arrived, just in time, but someone took half of what I had piled at the corner of the field until the time to burn came. I cannot imagine why, nor that it was from kindness, unless the village caretaker had room in his truck and more than a little pity for me, knowing my hands are full with a new puppy.

Or maybe Maria told him to help "cette femme qui fait le travail d'un homme, le travail que son mari devrait faire" and went on her way to collect her walnuts the tree in her garden gives.
....

The further mésaventures de Mlle Fia Lux de la Pellousery

Wisp and Fia
Naptime by the fire

It was a tough day for a small dog yesterday. Her staged "theft" by the village caretaker and various inappropriate pipis were nothing compared to her mésaventures at the pool.

September was a month of rain, and a month without chlorine tablets for the pool, and the consequences of nearly two months of neglect were becoming significant days away from closing the pool for the year. Last year, I closed a pristine pool, and come spring, I reaped the rewards with the easiest opening ever. I did not intend to close it with a deposit of algae settled on the bottom and a layer of dead leaves floating on the surface, so I went and got chlorine and carried Fia, who is still too young to go up and down stairs (that many, anyway), down to clean it, Rapide on my heels. This was one of those rare opportunities to see how little your puppy understands of the world in which she now lives and what first encounters of the terrorizing kind are like.

Fia nosed around the edge of the pool, sniffing, picking up dead leaves in her puppy mouth, and stepping around Rapide, in her usual position at the far corner of the pool's deep end, while I skimmed out the leaves from the two Clerodendrum tomentosums, or Downy Chance, trees at poolside. Then, suddenly, she didn't make it past Rapide on another trip around, but found herself paddling frantically in the cold October water, blind from fear and the desire to live past her mere 10 weeks.

I dropped my net and bolted the few feet that separated us and grabbed for the cord I had tied around her collar for her to trial along behind, part of her leash training, feeling suddenly very grateful for the cord. She was, nonetheless, doing quite well, even if she didn't realize it, but my eldest stepson's possible future father-in-law's words at lunch last Sunday came back to me, "Oh! Jamais dans la piscine!" He shook his head gravely and took a sip of his Graves. He's a vet.

My husband was quick to agree with him, but I am of the opinion that if you have a pool, your dog should a) know how to swim, b) understand that she can fall into it and stay afloat, and c) be able to find the stairs out. I didn't ask his reasons, but I suspect they have more to do with a dog's place in the human household universe than with anyone's health or safety. I remember nearly losing Baccarat because she never discovered she can swim and with the summer cover down, she couldn't understand that -- even had she known she could swim -- there was a stair to safety just across the pool from where she had been clinging for dear life to the crown.

This, I was not eager to repeat. I pulled her trembling little body out of the pool and set her down, dripping all over the fake stone pool deck. Rapide looked on, implacably. She knew perfectly well this little one was not going to sink to the bottom of the pool like a stone, but she was not also about to rise to pluck her from the water.

Fia continued on her rounds of the pool, occasionally stopping to shiver pitifully.

"Fia," I told her, "reste au soleil l'où il fait beau et plus chaud, comme ça. Oui, ma fifille, c'est bien," and she gazed at me, checking to see if it was plausible that I could be believed. On the other hand, what choice had she?

The surface skimmed, I prepared the tube for the vacuum attachment (we are too fold-fashioned or poor, more truthfully, for a robot, or the money just goes to the dogs) and headed to the pump house, followed by Fia, to change all the valves, and then back to the pool, still followed by my little shadow. She resumed her trips around the pool edge, occasionally heading off to sniff a plant, a bush, or to shiver by the chair on which my jacket and Sam's camera lay. I was sure she wanted to put my wool jacket on. I considered it, but she was just too wet.

Working on the shallow end and nearly done with the job, Fia cut the corner to get past Rapide, who had changed corners, and -- splash! She was back in the pool. This time she went in feet and not head over tail (literally) backwards. Puppies, as much as they are all that is good, cannot walk on water. The little paws went into motion and she kept herself above the surface, far from convinced this could last longer than the next paddle. I looked at her. Rapide looked at her. She looked at me and asked, "Why are you not getting me out of here?!"

I reached down for the cord again and began to walk toward the stairs opposite, her little body moving through the water along the wall of the pool, eyes darting sideways up at me to see what I was doing and tell me she really wasn't sure it was the best thing, until her paws made contact with the stairs. The water was still over her head, and she knew it, but then they touched the top stair and -- oui! Je peux me mettre debout!

She was fatiguée. More nervous exhaustion than physical in Rapide and my opinion, but those legs had moved awfully fast. She placed her forepaws on the crown and stood, trying to pull her hind quarters up out of the very cold and not very nice to be in water, but it wasn't working. She wasn't strong enough. She looked at me. I reached down and placed a hand under her puppy butt and gave her a boost. She shook herself and remained soaked, trembling and miserable; swimming might not become a favorite activity, and if it never does, the pool will be anything but a temptation.

In fact, today when I carried her down to vacuum again after the floculant (heaven knows how you say that in English, but it's the stuff that makes the algae clump and sink to the bottom for easier removal with the vacuum), she took one look at the pool and made a bee-line for the stairs, hopping up them as fast as her four legs could carry her.
....

Les mésaventures de Mlle Fia Lux de la Pellousery

Fia Lux, 9 weeks, 6 days

You might think that on puppy number two, you've got it all down. Everything is going to be just perfect, according to the books this time. Of course, you would be wrong, the books don't even agree, but you have learned and you are, most importantly, vastly more patient and serene, arguably the two most important qualities to possess when teaching a new puppy.

You discover just how lame you are when you take your little one out to relieve herself, being very certain to practice "the tree" when she tugs at her leash and twists like the Black Stallion on the other end, which she does just past the corner of the France Telecom utility building, while you bend down and use your goofiest voice to get her to take a step towards you and release the tension on the leash so you can praise her "enthusiastically" -- even, and especially, if she is in the middle of doing what you don't want her to do, but she wants to do; the smallest move in the direction of your will is to be recognized with gusto and rewarded --, when her attention is captured by an unseen object or occurrence around the corner.

"Fia, viens ici, Fia! Fia, Fia, Fia, viens! Viens, ma petite, allez, viens, Fia! Allez, allez -- Fia? Hunh?" Even more suddenly than she stopped looking at you, she is suddenly no longer on her leash, and you are staring at the clasp where your puppy was a heartbeat before. Unbelievable, you think, I attached that. I am certain I did. You spring from where you are crouched to make certain she doesn't dash off in front of the one car per hour that passes at that time of the day, and you see a man running off, holding something in his arms.

Your puppy!

I ran after him, just about to call out, and thinking he looked an awful lot like the cantonnier, or the village caretaker, when the man whirled around to face me, barely controlling his urge to laugh out loud, a smile from ear to ear.

"Mais tu m'as fait peur!" I said, stopped in my tracks and feeling like a bit of an idiot, when he should have been feeling like a much greater one, a positive lout for playing such a trick on me -- and teaching me unintentionally how easy it is to steal a valuable and beloved pet. Suddenly, I felt like one of those parents in China, who watch their little boys swept away by desperate parents, unable to produce anything but worthless girls, or the despicable people who take them to sell to those desperate parents. Fia sat cuddled in his arms, perfectly at ease. She had met him the day before, and he had been entirely charmed by her warm tummy, soft fur and puppy eyes, and there he was, laughing like he had executed the perfect plaisanterie.

"Ah, c'est trop drôle!" he crowed, "C'était tout ce que je pouvait faire de ne pas rire tellement ça a marché! Tu ne te doutais de rien!"

"Et oui, mais on a peur quand on vois quelqu'un en train de se sauver avec son chiot, tu sais. Et puis, je n'ai pas pu comprendre pourquoi sa laisse avait lâché comme ça."

I didn't have the heart to tell him how truly rotten that was of him, when Fia was well and he was having such a jolly time of my vulnerability. There was no pretending. I had been scared, and who on earth wouldn't have been, but how could I hurt him by making him know that his trick was just a little bit appalling, when he had never intended to do anything that wasn't perfectly innocent? Ah la-la la-la.

He placed the warm bundle of puppy in my arms, and crossed the street back to the old school they have converted into apartments that still haven't rented, these 3 or 4 months later, to finish repainting the wall the adjoint mayor, who showed up for job meetings in our tiny village in the middle of the countryside, with not even a street light or a boulangerie and no regular bus service, in her fur coat, made up and in heels, said was still not the right color, infuriating François, who had been assigned the job of the repaints, when the painting contractor had probably informed her that the consequences of her indécision was not included in the contract. Au revoir, et merci.

I had listened to him grumble yesterday and was up to date on relations at the mairie, and the opposition ticket forming for the 2014 elections in our village of under 400 residents. He does not appreciate this new adjoint mayor, nor the fact that under the leadership of the present maire and his équipe à la mairie, "il y a plus de bruit au cimitière que dans le village." Asked what constitutes his idea of pleasant village animation, and he answered "Plus de fêtes à la salle des fêtes."

Sigh. And here I was, thinking there were more than enough fêtes at the village salle des fêtes. And that is what passes for important political decision-making in this village, where gay rights have already been established as a matter of course by the government's provision since years gone by for gay couples to "se déclarer en couple reconnu à la mairie" and receive the benefits married couples do, while leaving the matter of gay marriage as hotly debated here as in, oh, say, Western Texas, and the general knowledge that our cantonnier does not live with his nephew, the ghost of which pretext he has finally given up understanding that no one whatsoever has the least problem with this.

Now, my husband and I, at least, thought that the 1 am rollerblading in his ex-wife's collants and débardeur -- sans pantalons -- engaged in by our neighbor further up the street, the one who befriended Baccarat in the early days of her life here and prepared a pheasant a hunter had presented to my husband and I for being nice people one Sunday when we were out walking the dogs (Stéphane said he had been a chef and restaurant owner, in addition to an accomplished golfer, an expert in detecting counterfeit bills for the Bank of France -- sort of a money spy, he liked to imply --, so who better to prepare the pheasant? He insisted I join him for lunch the mets fins he prepared of it, and where I learned he was also an aspiring composer with a Mylène Farmer fétiche and his own boots to complete the image.), was bizarre, and I am nearly certain there was peau léopard involved in his outfit as my husband described it when he came back inside from whatever he had been doing outside on the sidewalk at 1 am, arriving just in time to see Stéphane sail up the street and fall flat on his face in his remarkable get-up. Acting for all the world as though this was perfectly ordinary in the life of a minuscule village, pommé dans la campagne, he stood up to chat
with my husband, checking his collants for damage, blithely unaware that his credibility had taken a sharp downward turn.

I wondered at the cantonnier's want of greater animation in the village, except it was true that Stéphane was finally gone, and no one was mourning his ignominious departure. This was, after all, the same Stéphane my husband chided me for no longer stopping by to visit with the dogs and failing to return his hospitality by inviting him to dinner. Stéphane had also distinguished himself in the first weeks he lived in the house he rented by serving free cocktails from his kitchen window, complete with hors d'oeuvres, or amuses bouches, if you like, and music. Often enough, l'heure d'apéro coincided with the hour of walking the dogs, and since Baccarat and he were such great friends, I had to stop by. I am not sure this did my image with my husband's colleagues next door to Stéphane any good, but I hoped my dignity and status held me in good (enough) stead and listened to Stéphane's stories, while Robert and another neighbor, sometimes the cantonnier or his "copain" joined the little group at the window.

It was rather sympathique in its intimacy, a candle burning on the counter behind him and music wafting out into the dark fall evening air, and his amuse bouches were phénoménales.

One evening, I had gone to fetch mon mari and bring him for a finger of Scotch. I was feeling guilty, knowing that he was sitting in front of the TV, while I was having a drink up the street with my dogs, Robert and l'homme aux collants. God only knows why, but he joined us, and in a moment when the conversation was at its merriest, Stéphane leaned toward me over Baccarat and said, "Tu sais, j'aimerais coucher avec toi si jamais tu veux."

And then, he smiled and winked at me, like we were in on something together (as if!), his round belly protruding over his jeans (I had checked his attire before going to get my husband; it could have been his hot pants and bare hairy legs).

I am sure I involuntarily tightened my L.L. Bean anorak around me and looked terribly confuse, while trying to maintain my polite social smile.

I did not hear you, I did not hear you, I DID NOT HEAR YOU.

Of course, it is perfectly clear now that I should have said, "Chéri, tu sais ce que Stéphane vient de me proposer?"

"Non? Encore un délicieux plat au faisan, ma chérie?"

"Mais non! Il vient de me faire une proposition indécente! Ce n'est pas gentil?"

And, then, my husband would have knocked him out, just as he has longed to all these months since I finally caved to his chiding that I had been unkind to Stéphane and really ought to invite him for dinner, the fateful evening we proposed that he buy our old Volvo, the cadeau empoisonné given to us along with a 1991 Chrysler Voyager by one of the midwives at the hospital when her father died, as a gesture of her gratitude for his medical services that resulted in her children, because he had no car to get to the train to get to work, and he accepted. We even lent him our other car until the Volvo underwent a few necessary repairs and agreed that he could pay us at the end of March. It was early December.

Had it ended there, my husband would have felt no real urge to violence, but there was the day long after late March, when we still had not received un centime for the car, when I ran into Stéphane outside the bar across the street from the house, where he was accustomed to run up the bill that prevented him, apparently, from paying for the car, and he told me that he had accumulated 94 parking tickets since he had been driving our cars, but don't worry, he said, brandishing a photocopy of an article from Le Journal des Yvelines that reported that the Tribunal de Versailles had decided in favor of a plaintiff who argued that the law does not actually require one to put the proof of payment for parking on the dashboard, and so you don't have to pay for parking after all, we'd never have to pay!

I had turned as white as the Volvo and felt like decking him on the spot, but I got back in the Fiat, rolled up to my parking spot and showed my husband the copy of the article Stéphane had provided me. He had many ready, one for each batch of tickets he returned unpaid to the Trésor Publique. His argument was made of concrete.

Since then, there was the speeding ticket, the chickens he kept dying of starvation in the entry to his house behind the closed gate when he failed to ever return again, he had another gullible woman to take him in, while he emptied her bank account, and drover her daughter's car, while she was away in South America, or somewhere, the rooster that finally flew out over the gate in his search for food and landed at our neighbor's feet while he washed his car, giving him a fright, and the dog, the poor Brittany Spaniel Nuts, who he had left for months already and then all the following winter alone in a cave behind his house with nothing but a bit of straw on which to sleep and someone to come and fill his food bowl. He barked long into the frigid nights, and we cursed Stéphane out loud.

Eventually, Nuts found a way to escape, like the rooster before him, and the cantonnier took him to the animal refuge. I called the woman there to tell her what I knew. She asked if we knew how to reach the owner, and I gave her the number we had for him. She thanked me, furious with Stéphane for his neglect and abuse of this poor dog. I thought a moment after I set the phone down and called her right back.

"Madame, quoi que vous faites, il ne faut surtout pas lui rendre son chien. Il va l'abondonner à nouveau. C'est un homme sans scrupules qui ne vie que pour lui."

"Le chien a déjà 16 ans," she told me. I knew what that meant. A 16-year-old dog is impossible to adopt out.

"Il vaut mieux le faire piquer," I told her. Putting him to sleep would be a mercy next to what he had lived through.

And so, the police canceled the parking tickets and fined him. The owner of the house he rented, and for which he never paid, involved the authorities, and his belongings were seized and taken away in two trucks a month ago. We had already, with the permission of the police, entered his property and removed our poor car, its front seat broken, the battery dead, and had it taken to the dump. As for Stéphane, he'll be lucky if he only spends 3 months in jail when they get their hands on him, and he is even more fortunate still that the police will and my husband didn't.

This is not enough animation for one small village?

But, I began with Fia's misadventures, which might be better called my own.

This morning, I had taken her out to relieve herself and all was well when I heard noises in the kitchen behind me. I went to look and find her dragging her soaking wet nylon rope -- she learned to ignore the string yesterday, and has progressed to trailing a 1/4" rope from her collar as part of her leash training -- away from a large puddle of pipi. From the pattern on the floor, it was clear the rope was sodden from pipi.

"Fia! Mauvais pipi!" I said in my sternest, most displeased voice, grasping her and showing her the puddle before carrying her out to where she may relieve herself, which she did, just a little bit, before trotting over to the bit of gravel and dirt at the hedge along the sidewalk to do a popo, and stepped directly into the one she had left an hour before.

And Stéphane will never be Mylène Farmer, no matter how hard he tries.

"J'aimerais le voir essayer ça en prison," chuckles my husband.


....

The beginning of it all

Rest time

It would be a bit of an exaggeration to call it naptime. It lasted about 5 minutes and the Energizer Bunny was up and toddling about again, worrying me that she'll nibble on a succulent edge of gypsum board or faire un p'tit pipi là où il ne le faut pas.

I have been up since before the first light, and have had two brief walks (this produced two pipis, but did not prevent a popo là où il ne le faut pas), fed the dogs (the plural is so nice), made my breakfast, done some laundry, had a cup of tea and another of coffee, done my toenails, found some kind of a lump under the skin on Rapide's neck (we have an appointment at the vet Tuesday) and made a fire in the fireplace, watched Tony Elias become the world champion in the category Moto 2, and it's only 9:18 am.

Had I known how productive I can be with a puppy -- had I remembered, that is -- I might have gotten one every year!

Today, we are meeting the parents of our eldest son's girlfriend, who are visiting from Numea before traveling on to NYC. Monsieur is a vétérinaire and, I am assured, will be enchanté if we bring along the petite Fia. We are expected for a drink before lunch , and then we have reservations on the terrasse of Les Fables de la Fontaine. Another wonderful restaurant by Christian Constant in a row of them along the rue Saint Dominique. You only meet your child's "in-laws" for the first time once, best to do it in style.

And, my philosophy for eating out? It had better be an awful lot better than what I can do at home, and that is worth paying something for.

Time to get Sam up and do his grocery shopping before I dress to go.
....

Fiat Fia

Fia comes home, Bliss

She is sleeping at my feet, a fire burns in the wood stove, Rapide is snoring gently from her bed and the cats are napping or on the prowl, Sam is up in his room, preparing work for school. If Hunka Munka lived here and did my housework, all would be perfect. As it is, the scenery makers could have worked just a little harder to make the "cadre" a bit more idyllic, but Fia doesn't notice. She only has eyes for me, and Sam.

It is an amazing thing how quickly they adopt us. All those days that I worried, mostly because my husband worried, but he is such a worry wort, that she would receive a chill welcome from Rapide, Shadow and Wisp, who would feel that she is quite unnecessary to their happiness; worried that she would cry, missing her brothers and her sisters, her mother. No, none of that. Oh, yes, Shadow has let her know that she would do well to keep her distance with a hiss and a threatening paw in the air, but Fia is hale and heartier than that, apparently. Sam chuckled, too, watching Fia crouch to pounce, thinking perhaps the best answer was to invite Shadow to play. Catching a glimpse of her tail in the corner of her eye as she turned and turned on her rear paws, she began to play with that. Shadow walked away.

She would have shrugged were cats to do this.

Rapide welcomed her with a sniff and an invitation to play, let her join her in her bed and curl up at her hind quarters, just like Baccarat did when she was a baby, and hasn't uttered a syllable of complaint. She seems to find it perfectly natural that this baby, like so many she had, should appear and join the household.

Wisp, well, as I thought, she has missed Baccarat, and, here, she is superior enough in intelligence to find a new playmate and patient enough to wait for her to grow big enough to cuddle with, since she has been made to understand by Rapide that she is not welcome to snuggle with her, ever. Shadow, yes.

I am rediscovering the constant vigilance that is required to guard against threat to household objects, inappropriate toileting, and the attention that is needed to make the bond you appreciate forever. The first poohs were out of doors (Bravo, ma Fia!), a first pipi occurred indoors, but I took her out for a first very brief walk in leash, which she sort of understood, and she stopped and did her first big girl pipi on the sidewalk at 10 pm.

In the car, she settled at my feet while Sam drove. She looked at me, and she looked at Sam. After awhile, while we were crossing the forêt d'Anet, I broke down and picked her up. Sam had asked me more than once why I didn't hold her.

"I want her to know her place and be happy to occupy it."

But, her place is also snuggling with us. Sam was right.

She leaned her chin on my arm, or my shoulder, and looked out the window, calm, content. For a moment, as we drove through the same villages I rode up in the cabin of the tow truck to cross yesterday, returning from my failed attempt to go get first Sam in Chartres and then Fia together, Sam moved his elbow closer to mine, and she stretched her chin out to lay her neck across my arm and her chin on his. How can one risk missing these moments?

Madame Sivadier said, "Elle est bien dans ses baskets," which she means she is at ease in the world, confident, and self-possessed. She is also sweet, playful, outgoing, and gentle.

She is all these things.

She just moved a little closer to Rapide's bed to nap. I am waiting for her to climb in next to her and find the companionship Baccarat and Rapide enjoyed those too few years they had together. I knew Rapide would accept her. She was a good mother.

All in good time.

My husband called from the hospital, where he is on duty, to ask how the welcome went.

"Tu avais l'aire si heureuse avec elle," he said to me. "J'ai été content de te voir comme ça."

I am happy to have little Fia with us. Sam came back down to get a drink, as a pretext, I am sure, to see what she was up to, and stroked her head.

"It's funny to see how small she is," he said. "Compared to Rapide, she is like a little doll."



Ca il y est, Fia is in Rapide's bed, and Rapide is grunting, unsure what to do. Now, she has gone to see her and is wagging her tail. Now, Fia's out and Rapide just got back in. Fia has approached to sit closer.

It's like a dance of acquaintanceship.

We're all happy, I think, to rediscover the joy of discovering a very small being, watching it grow and starting a new bond all over again. I think like with all second children, we'll all relax and enjoy it more this time. Baccarat taught us nearly everything we need to know.

And when you look at this picture, and remember a certain one of Baccarat, taken in exactly the same place in almost exactly the same position just months ago, you can only know that you did the exact right thing.

"And, in the end, the love you take
Is equal to the love you make."
....

Murphy's Law

19th breakdown

At least the countryside is lovely here, just outside Gilles, but, as the saying goes, if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong, and today was one of those days when at least the breeder and I should just not have gotten out of bed.

Oh, and the pregnant woman at Truffaut who cut her foot open with God knows what putting her shopping cart away and wound up with a shoe full of blood.

The best was when I told the employee who thought first aid amounted to standing next to her with her hand on the woman's shoulder that she really should be lying down with her feet elevated above her head, and the employee turned to glare at me and said, "I called the rescue squad. She doesn't want to lie down, what do you want me to do? Throw her on the floor?"

My, that was defensive and uncalled for now, wasn't it? It is also, I thought rather sadly, fairly French. Perhaps those of you reading over in the States will tell me that, even sadder, it is this way everywhere now that stupid and uneducated is in.

I suggested that she was responsible for providing proper first aid care and assuming the consequences, not the pregnant woman standing there bleeding all over the store's linoleum flooring saying she's fine, really. She wasn't fine, really. You treat for shock, débile. Alright, so I didn't say she was "débile", but I hoped she understood it, and I left. I had a puppy to pick up. I had stopped at Truffaut for puppy food and a toy for the car ride home, since the order for her holistic, non-grain, super-duper premium, this-has-better-not-give-her-cancer dog food hasn't arrived yet, and I was on my way to go get her. The sun was shining, the fields were glowing, I had escaped the heavy Friday afternoon traffic for the country roads, and I was still playing over and over in my head what I ought to have said to that unpleasant woman.

No, you oughtn't have, my better self told me. I obviously wasn't listening because the sentences I could have pronounced in return kept running through my head. I was even saying them in an undertone.

"Stop," I told myself, not my best self, but the other one who does go on. "You left. It's over."

The sentences I did not utter continued to repeat for a few more minutes, and then, mercifully, I found that I had listened. I had actually seen a horrendously ugly and out of place wood house that looked like a cross between a log cabin, a chalet and a contemporary developer house, and my mind had a new bone to chew.

That's what happens when they tell you wood houses like in the US are in, and you refuse to design them. That's what you get. See? Myself was at it again. If my husband feels he is an unfair recipient of this editorializing, well, what about me?

I drove on through the villages, Menerville, Perdreauville, Bréval and Neauphlette, and then --

What was that? asked myself, alarmed.

I listened. There was a clanking noise, like something metallic was bouncing and banging along on the pavement under the car. The window was down and I leaned my head toward the outside to see if it were perhaps coming from the field or the railroad track to my left. It sounded like it was coming from under the car. I slowed. I listened. It slowed. I passed under the railroad trestle and the noise grew louder. I slowed to a stop and opened the door, leaning out to look under the car, and that's when I saw the steam and cut off the engine. The heat gage did not appear to be elevated, but there was definitely steam or smoke whistling out from under the hood of the car, and radiator fluid spreading into a thick green puddle under the front end.

"Tu l'as peut-être foutu," said my husband, reassuringly, when I got him tracked down at the hospital, while waiting for the tow truck I'd called. The dealership was expecting us.

"Je ne pense pourtant pas," I said. I know when you have to pull over and how not to blow the head gasket, merci beaucoup. "Et Monsieur Lecorre ne le pense pas non plus. Il sait qu'elle a fait ce bruit, et il pense que c'est plutôt la pompe à eau."

So there. And then, my cell phone battery went dead.

I had been on the phone with the breeder, who told me that when she thought that all the remaining puppies were out of the woods, a black female had died, one of the two that were chosen before I got there and reserved the remaining one. She had called the new owners and announced the sad news, offering them the remaining little chocolate female, at no additional cost, but her losses were mounting fast for one day. Strangely, my little girl had been the smallest of the three black females, and she hadn't been chosen, but now, the breeder told me, she is one of the biggest and strongest, growing fast and one of the ones to escape all misfortune.

"Oui, c'est nous qui sommes en train de vivre tous ses malheurs à sa place!"

Anyway, it just goes to show you how little you can tell at 4 weeks. Perhaps this one is blessed, if Baccarat was not.

But, as far as the car goes, we had just had the radiator replaced in May, but not the water pump, and when I finally opened the hood, preferring not to scald my hands, since this had been such a banner day already, I saw the ventilator blades at a rogue angle. The guy from the tow truck looked at it when he arrived.

"Et oui, c'est bien probablement la pompe à eau. Voyez comment c'est de travers?" Yes, I nodded, I had seen how it was crooked, and I felt very much relieved and vindicated. "Elle démarre?" he asked.

I looked through the window of the car and considered how best to reply. I had not actually tried to start the car again, since I hadn't seen any earthly purpose and several risks in doing that.

"Je pense, oui, je veux dire, pourquoi pas?" He nodded and turned the key, and she started right up, clanging away like an old jalopy. He put her in reverse and drove it back to the truck bed and then hit the accelerator to take it back up the 10% slope, if it weren't more, radiator fluid flowing freely from the front end and more steam starting to waft up past the radiator grill.

"He has to know what he's doing," I told myself, and myself nodded weakly, feeling a little bit not so good.

We drove back the exact route I had come, Truffaut being practically next to the BMW dealership, where the arrival of our old wagon on the tow truck certainly made a "tache" compared to all those newer vehicles the owners of which were actually able to drive into the parking lot. I reflected on the likelihood that we would never be able to afford anything in the used car building they had recently completed, especially if I keep on buying dogs, hoping we would not be in any great need any too soon.

Monsieur Lecorre greated me, warmly as usual, despite the fact that we have not made a recent purchase of a newer car, and I asked him to call me a taxi.

"Bien sur, je le ferai tout de suite, comme ça, vous perdrez un minimum de temps." But I was thinking of Frédéric, who I had seen putting the motorcycles away next door and getting ready to close up shop and head home, to Moosesucks.

"Savez, je me demande si je ne ferais pas mieux de demander à Fred s'il ne pourrait pas me ramener à la maison," I said.

"Mais bien sur,"said Monsieur Lecorre.

"Mais bien sur!"said Fred.

And 3 hours after leaving the house, I was home. Tomorrow, I will get Fia in the Fiat.

"Ha!" laughed the breeder, "the Fiat. C'est plutôt parfait ça!"

"Et oui," I laughed with her, "sauf que c'est beaucoup moins adapté sans arrière."

"Oh, vous la mettrez aux pieds du passager, et quand elle essayera de bouger, vous lui direz 'non', et elle va finir par comprendre et s'endormir."

I'm not so certain, but who knows. She's survived the weaning crisis, and she's growing faster than the others, maybe she'll be a quick study, too.

Sam's got the PSG soccer ball all ready.
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