Snow dog

Fia, a dog, a stick, and some snow

Among the joys of true, snow-covered winter is watching the dogs play in the snow. Not that it's really any different than watching them play in the grass, but the contrast of lustrous black dog on pristine white snow is certainly stronger, and snow flies up dramatically from under those powerful paws, and gets to fall again. Pure energy.

She's warming up for Argentière in the Chamonix-Mont Blanc valley in two or three weeks, a year after we placed Baccarat's ashes above the glacier on the backside of les Grands Montets and at the roots of a giant fir in the forest of the Moraine.

And, to own the truth, it's not "dogs", anymore, but "the dog", Fia, my "dark angel". One plays, the other tries to avoid her and to sit on the steps out of harm's and impact's way. At 12 in one month from today, I can understand Rapide. It's getting harder to make it back up the long middle stair of the garden, with it's 28 steps. She takes them one at a time.

One day, she'll not return, but for now, I am relieved when I see her pick her pace up into a trot as she rounds the fish-pond-in-a-(former)-fountain.

So, who wants to come play? Xander? Ramona and Hudson? I know you're all too far, and, Hudson, you'd probably rather sit on the sidelines with Rapide, although I think you'd find the climate in harmony with your ancestral memory.

Samantha? Do you want to come to France and play in the snow?



Perhaps as soon as those crazy but lovable and funny people with whom she shares her home start acting like humans and let her out the damn door. Sheesh.

Scooby Doo? Coco?

Coco, training center Maisons-Laffitte, Jan 13

Prof, you can sit on the steps with Rapide and watch the young ones romp.

Prof, "du dos", with Rapide and Fia

I'll join you two, with my camera, and then just as soon as Gina and the horses are back from Cagnes-sur-Mer, Rapide, we'll head to Maisons-Laffitte for another late afternoon play date in the Rond Poniatowski.
....

Wisp's turn

Little Wisp and littler Fia,

The first kiss and little pink tongues

October, 2010

Something is going on with Wisp. Will o' Wisp. The found cat. Little Wisp, at 3.5 kg, which is robust compared to the 1.5 kg she weighed when my husband brought her home from the path in the woods in the middle of the boucle de la Seine, where he found her lying in a puddle, taking her for a discarded rag until she raised her head and meowed. Calling to him, or signalling resignation?

"Pass. Don't be afraid. I cannot hurt you. I am dying," or "Help me. Please."?

He lifted her into his arms and brought her to mine that rainy Wimbledon final in 2007. She has barely left either of ours since. Our faces, necks and shoulders, more exactly. Her idea of heaven is when my husband and I are lying close, side by side, and she has two shoulders, two necks into which to nestle, one for each end of her body.When it wasn't ours, it was Baccarat's, who took her into her care like a lost puppy of her own, this dog who had never had a puppy of her own, only a year old -- born the day France lost in ignominy to Italy and Zidane played his last game, walking off the field in a state of dishonor, July 10, 2006. She and her mother approached this little cat, so frail and weak she couldn't stand on her own hind legs, and licked her nearly into oblivion.

If there is a direct proportional relationship between the number and force of the licks given to an ailing animal, Wisp was in really bad shape. I have told this story before.

Or, I thought I had. I have looked, and I can't find it. Perhaps this is a good thing, though, since it gives me the opportunity to tell the story again and maybe do it better, or just let it go. I have been asked to consider making my posts "stand alone" without referring to past posts or leaving the reader hanging. I have spent some time thinking about this.

I am not sure that I will ever be able to want to do this because the posts aren't columns on topical subjects, and I am not a columnist. I am a diarist, who got tired of the whiny, overly personal subjects in my dear diary and decided to see what lies between the wholly intimate and the fictional and how I might tell it. They are moments in my life, and because lives are bound to their pasts and rarely anticipate their futures, even if the future is as obvious as the punch line of a terrible joke, each post contains references to the past, never links to the future, and if the resolution is not contained in the moment, it will not appear in the post; I am left with my own fear or sadness, and so, I am afraid, is my reader, who may chose to use the tags to look for additional information, background or reassurance, but who may also use the comments to ask me.

I may or may not answer. That depends on the question.

I'd like to be a novelist, like Jane Austen or George Eliot, but I am still a good ways away from that, unfortunately, lacking, first, the will to work, second, the vision, and, third, the talent. Being totally honest, I hoped writing here would take me a step closer. Maybe it did, if you use a microscope to measure the distance traveled.

I will tell the story again, I will give this post the tag "Wisp's Story" and hope that I remember it so that I can find it again, whenever I want someone to know her story (or whenever someone wants to know her story without my thinking of it), and perhaps I will offer a prize to the person who finds the original post containing her story.

When my husband came through the door holding a sodden cat at arm's length, dripping on the terracotta tiles, my reaction was, unbelievably, to both of us, "Oh! Non."

"Comment ça 'non'? Quand tu amènes une bête à la maison, c'est 'oui', mais quand je le fais, c'est 'non'," he demanded.

He was pouting, and I hadn't even had the time to stand up from my armchair. His son stood behind him in the July rain, become standard issue summer weather in our nondescript temperate climate. I stood and reached for the animal, receiving a feather's weight of wet fur and bones gone limp, no muscles left to stiffen the spine or raise the soaking wet fur. I regretted the "non" I had let go. It hadn't been understood. I didn't mean "no", but I didn't know what I meant, either.

Oh! No, not again, is the closest to my meaning. No as in a rejection of the possibility of her state, that this little cat could come to what she was. No to the argument it would bring, anticipating that he would hand her to me, ask me to care for her, and then to ask me -- because he would -- to give her away. No, I would not care for her and then give her away. You must know me better than that by now. I find toads in the pool pump filter basket, ducks in the pool, birds everywhere, and I try to save them. I usually fail. I hold funerals. I do not give them away, so take care in what you bring to me.

He returned to try taking his walk again, and I settled the tiny, fragile cat on my lap and watched the rest of the Wimbledon men's final. Several sets in which I didn't have to think about what to do or about her future, several sets she might not even survive. She fared better than Rafa, though, and I called to the dogs to take a walk on the dirt lanes down along the fields and the Seine, the mostly dry cat rolled into the hem of my sweatshirt. She lay there as we walked, not even tiring my arms. And then, I felt wet. She had released her bladder without making the slightest movement. We returned to the house. It was a Sunday afternoon, no stores open, the only visit to the vet possibly at emergency rates. We had a night to get through. She never left the warmth of someone's arms.

At bedtime, I got out a towel, lay it next to where I sleep, and settled her into my side. She did not move. The next morning, she was still breathing. I picked up the cat on the towel, placed it on a pillow and carried her to the car. We went to the grocery store for easy to eat wet food in time for the store's opening. She was still breathing when I came out with small aluminum tins of premium wet food and the cat milk I found. She raised her head when I opened the food right there in the car, and she ate. Her energy eating surpassed any she had shown until then.

She would be alright.

I called the vet and took her in.

"Oh la," said the vet, "Qu'est-ce qu'on a ici?" I explained what I knew of her history while he looked her over. She was fur on skin on bones. You could feel each point of every single vertebra in her spine, all sides. He listened and looked up at me.

"Ca fait un bon moment depuis qu'elle est abandonnée," he confirmed. "Elle n'a pas mangé correctement depuis plusieurs mois. Je ne vous conseillerais pas de la faire vacciner. Elle peut avoir une vraie saleté, et en plus, puisque ça fait si longtemps depuis qu'elle a pu bien manger, elle est peut-être touchée."

He meant that we should not spend the money to vaccinate her until we tested her for disease. It might not be worthwhile. He meant, also, that hunger had perhaps made her too crazy. He gave her a shot that made her drop like Sleeping Beauty to the examining table between his hands, shaved a small spot on her slender neck and drew blood. Then, he gave her another shot and she raised her head like a cartoon cat, coming back to life from sudden death. He laughed. He enjoys giving that drug for the effect on the pet owners, as much as for the effect on the animals that lets him get their blood to test.

"On va envoyer ça au labo, et je vous tiendrai au courant."

I scooped the cat up, put her back in one of the three travel kennels I had gotten when our enormous American cats had flown to France 5 years before, enormous for this cat, who weighed in at 1.5 kg to their 9 kg apiece. The call came the next day. She was clean of all disease. She was merely physically wasted.

"Surveyez-la, quand-même," said the vet, "On ne peut pas encore savoir si elle va avoir un comportement normal."

I watched her. She continued to sleep by my side, in the protection of the crook of my elbow. She rode on my husband's shoulders, like Cunégonde Mouse (our brilliant rescue and magical mouse friend) had in times past. She become the chouchou of the dogs, if not the two cats, Shadow and Chloé, come from the US with their brother Nuts, since buried in the garden. She was no more touchée by her various traumas than I. I called the vet and made an appointment for her shots, and I spoke names aloud, hoping to hear one that sounded right. Sam rejected Vita (he was so right), Wilamena, and a long list of others. I got out my laptop and started searching. The details of that search are best left (along with the explanation of the name on which I settled, and which Sam approved) out. I'll give the explanation, anyway.

Will 'o Wisp is her full name. We call her Wisp, for short. A Will 'o Wisp is a magical sort of being that appears at Midsummer, and it is known by many names, including Puck in English. It is a being one cannot know if it is good or evil. It is manifested by a light, like a glow, a flame, hovering over the land, most usually marshes and swamps. In French, it is called the feu follet, which happens to also be a film by director Louis Malle, which he based on a novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. The will 'o the wisp is known as Jack 'o lantern, evoking my favorite holiday, and appears in nearly every folklore of Europe, eastern, central and western, as well as in the US, where the phenomena is called spook-lights, or ghost-lights.

We had found her at midsummer. She was but a wisp of a cat. Willow-like. We were waiting to see if she were good or evil. Oddly, little Fia was born in the "f" year. We could have named Wisp's new friend Feu-Follet, but they are not the same being, they did not have the same story.

The rest is history, and her friendship with Baccarat is family legend. Baccarat was her friend, her mother, her comfort. In October, Wisp squatted and released a drop of blood-stained urine. I took her to the vet.

"Elle n'a pas de fièvre. Je ne sens rien en la palpitant d'anormal, mais vous avez d'autres chats, n'est-ce pas?" I nodded. We did have another cat, still. One only, having lost Chloé nearly two years before, who went the way of her brother. Shadow was 11, and Shadow had not the time of day for Wisp. "Ah," she said.

The sort of "ah" that says, "Well, then it is to be expected". She explained that cats are not social beings like dogs, at least not with their own kind. They prefer to be alone, and they do not appreciate sharing a litter box. She recommended that we get another, explaining that Wisp was suffering from a cystitis, an inflammation of her bladder, idiopathic. This meant that it is a real physical problem, causing real physical pain, without a physical origin. It comes from psychological and emotional perturbation.

"On ne va pas prendre un deuxième bac à chat!" my husband objected, as though it were an intolerable luxury to have two litter boxes for two cats. I could, however, concede that one is already taking up a lot of space in our small home, and with the vet bills, even another 40 euros for another covered, double-bottomed litter box with swinging door was discouraging.

"Why," I moaned, looking around at the assortment of two and four-legged creatures, "can't we all just get along?"

Days passed, and she improved, until the day before yesterday, when she moved about the house in a perpetual squat, leaving euro coin-sized spots of urine everywhere: behind the sofa, between the television and the sofa, on the end table, on the staircase, at the top of the staircase, in a line that suggested a dribble from the top of the stairs to the bathroom door to the (thankfully) closed door of our room. Then, she yeowled at the top of her small lungs and threw up. I called the vet and cancelled the appointment I had made for that evening; she needed to go in right away. She'd be better in their hands than mine, in a cage, even.

An examination, two sonograms, several blood tests, and 163 euros later, we have a diagnosis. It is not a tumor. It is not calcium deposits. It is idiopathic cystitis. The vet handed me a box of anti-inflammatory medicine and another of something to tranquilize her. We are to try it for a month and see if it helps her.

"Quelques fois, ça aide, mais c'est des capsules --" she broke off, looking at me apologetically, and opened the little bottle to show me the capsules; they were half white and half blue, and they were big. I looked at her and grimaced. "Vous pouvez peut-être les enrouler dans quelque chose qu'elle aime manger --" she suggested hopefully. I cannot think of a single thing that she likes to eat that much, but at least they are not absolutely necessary and she does not have a tumor. She returned to the possible causes for this outburst of idiopathic cystitis. In her mind, it is the other animals, or a change, even, in the animals in the neighborhood, possibly the arrival of a cat she doesn't like, or Fia's arrival.

"Ou, la mort de Baccarat," I said.

She couldn't know how much Wisp and Baccarat loved each other. As much as I loved Baccarat. I understood that and wasn't jealous.

"Baccarat fut son doudou. Elle se mettait dans son cou et dormait des heures là, dans ses bras. Baccarat me regarda pour me dire 'Et, que fais-je mainentant' en poussant de grands soupires." The vet listened, her eyes opening wider. She nodded.

"C'est Peut-être ça," she said.

I explained how Rapide had not let her come to her for the same comfort for a long time, and how Fia is still too little. She's a better playmate than source of comfort. Even so, Rapide tolerates Wisp's need to snuggle without enthusiasm, and it is a sign of near desperation that Wisp settles in between a 5-month old lab who'd prefer to play and an aged lab who'd prefer she go away.

She misses Baccarat. She is the one who took it the hardest of all the animals. I understand that. I took Rapide to see her daughter when she was hospitalized. I did not think to take Wisp in her travel cage.

Time, my little Will o' Wisp. It takes time.

....

Not Marley

Fia, five months

photo by Sam

"Elle est vraiment très bien comportée," said my husband, looking down at Fia, who had come up to gaze into his face while he finished his dinner the other night, avec l'aire de concéder quelque chose. I felt a surge of pride in my training skills.

"Elle ne fait aucune bêtise. Aucune," I confirmed, avec l'aire de ne pas trop vouloir réjouir sans pouvoir m'en empêcher complètement.

I was merely stating the obvious: Fia is not Marley. On the flip side, she would make the subject of a very boring book, of which no one in his right mind would say, "Hey! That dog would make a great movie!" I am not sure I ever completely believed in Marley, though. I mean, how bad could Marley's dad be, and if not that bad, how bad, really, could his master be? And, if his master really were that bad, how come his wife didn't throw him out with the dog? I mean, what Labrador Retriever can't pass Obedience 101 if I can get mine to do it? I didn't even mess up that badly with my first one, Baccarat, and I never saw the sire go streaking by, or even know more than his name.

Baccarat, on the other hand, was no Fia, either, but I think I can take responsibility for that. Still, by comparison with Marley, it was mild. The worst, I believe, was the morning we came downstairs to find the nose of the last tread chewed to bits. It looked like the results of a beginner's level leather working class in belt making (I know, I have done one.). Teeth marks festooned the edge of the tread, from where Baccarat gazed at me, taking a break in her decorative teething work. I had hoped my husband would somehow fail to notice. He never does.

"Tu as vu ce que cette chienne a fait?" he demanded of me, once he came down a little later.

The light was at the perfect angle to show off the depth of the imprint her incisors, canines and pointy molars had achieved, chewing, chewing, chewing her way around the step. I had seen. This was the one time I wondered if Marley's master couldn't be for real the worst with me just behind him. I nodded.

"Je vais prendre de la pâte à bois. Tu verras,"I promised him, hoping I sounded convincing, "ça ne se verra plus."

What do you do? Do you acknowledge how ineffective you might be? How awful your dog might just actually be? That the future, indeed, is terribly unknowable? No, you don't. Not if you want your dog and to remain, both of you, in your home. You acknowledge the misdeed, the poor behavior, you express regret and solidarity with your spouse, you read up more on dog training, and you buy wood paste and tint and get on the repair fast. Out of sight, out of mind.

Really. It works. Not only did Baccarat never chew that tread again, my husband was actually relieved and impressed with the results. I wondered if she didn't like the smell of the wood paste and tint, or, was it more like what the librarians always told us about damage in schools: if you let it go, the students will keep at it until the destruction is total, but if you repair it -- however many times you have to do it --, the damage is never serious. Or, maintain something, and it stays nice.

But, here was Fia, five months old and perfectly house and hotel broken, delighted with her toys and to leave our belongings alone. I was prepared to acknowledge the wealth of knowledge I had accumulated asking questions from those I knew knew more than I, from the Internet and from my earlier suspected mistakes with Baccarat, but maybe, just maybe I had to give Fia and her sire a little credit where credit was due. After all, I couldn't be that wonderful, could I?

That is a rhetorical question.

Before leaving for Argentière, midway up the valley of Chamonix-Mont Blanc, I hemmed and hawed over the purchase of a portable, folding soft-shelled travel kennel for Fia. After all, she was fully two months younger than Baccarat was when I took her for the first time four years ago. I knew before I left that Baccarat could hold it, but when I got to the hotel, I discovered that she was already widdling by the time we got to the top of the staircase, and we were on the third floor (fourth for the States).

"Non, Baccarat! Non pipi ici!" I'd correct her in an hissing undertone, so as not to announce her misdeed, and start the race to the bottom of the stairs, where we had to confront the electronic sliding door at the entry of the hotel, which always took a couple of seconds to register your presence, and then a couple more to grant you access to the outdoors, where Baccarat would squat promptly, right on the granite stoop, in full view of passersby, the hotel patrons and the diners at The Office across the street. I'd already be praying that the drops of urine just inside the door would pass for snow, melting off the skis of everyone else returning from the slopes. I don't know how many were fooled.

And then, there was the incident with the low, upholstered wood armchair with the lion claw feet. She must have appreciated those feet because she lovingly nibbled them about the ankles. The chairs might have been old and well-broken in, but the hotel did not fail to notice, and I felt the guilt that comes of having made a mild misrepresentation. I had expressly said in my email to the hotel that I had two, well-behaved and calm Labrador Retrievers; I had not said one of them was still teething at seven months old. They said nothing, however, and were as nice to us as ever, commenting, in fact, on how well-behaved our dogs were, but the next year, there was a new per diem charge for doggy visitors. I paid. Baccarat behaved like a princess.

Could I take the chance of ruining our reputation and having our welcome revoked this year at the cost of 70 euros for the insurance and peace of mind a portable kennel would provide? I broke down and ordered the thing, typing the hotel's address into the shipping information, but when we arrived at the hotel, expecting to receive the package, the receptionist said, "Le colis n'est pas encore arrivé."

"Non?" She shook her head. "Alors, on n'a pas la niche pour la chienne?" I had no choice but to be honest and acknowledge my concern. It seemed the responsible thing to do. She shook her head again. "Bon. On verra bien alors. Elle est propre et très sage, mais ça m'aurait rassuré. She nodded sympathetically. We were, so to speak, on our own.

Not that I knew how she would react to spending a day in a portable, folding, soft-shelled travel kennel. It could have been worse.

The next day, we left her in the late morning after a long walk in the forest, an introduction to the housekeeping staff, cleaning rooms at the far end of the hall (I knew them from previous years, happily), and a last pipi with two Kongs stuffed with banana, apple bits and peanut butter and went to ski.

"At least the lifts close an hour earlier at this time of the season," I said to Sam, closing the door behind us and sending a prayer ceilingward. He nodded.

At 4:50 pm, we stowed our skis and boots in the ski room and headed upstairs. She had been alone, apart from housekeeping's visit, for nearly 6 hours.

"Listen," said Sam. He cocked his head toward the door to see if she ran across the room, jumped down from a bed, or was sitting right behind the door. It appeared to be the latter. I slid the card key into the slot, and pushed it open. There they were, Rapide and Fia, sitting there pressed between my bed and the wall, just short of hysterical with joy to see us back. Sam and I set off on a tour of the carpet, chair and bed legs, and trash cans.

Nothing.

Not one thing out of place. Not one spot of wet. Not one tooth mark. Rien.

"Her Kongs are under my bed," said Sam, straightening, "with her Powerade bottle."

"Here's the stone she carried up from the back of the car," I said from over by their bed. I felt a little stunned by our success. Or, my luck. "She's five months old, and she hasn't done a single bad thing, alone in a new place, all day long." We looked at each other, and then at Fia, who looked back at us, Moi? Oui?

"Bon," I said, reaching for her leash, "we'll see tomorrow, I guess." There was still the matter of getting her down the flights of stairs and past the electronic glass door before I could claim success. She sat, I attached her leash, and we struggled out the door.

Between our last visit and this, they had installed a fire door just outside the door to our room and the next room's in the little corridor off the main one, leaving us a meter square in which to maneuver between the two. Rapide did not like that. I learned I had to stand outside the door, Fia's leash in my left hand, left leg fully extended to hold the fire door open, while holding our room door open with my free hand before she would come out. It was an unpleasant gymnastic that involved the expression of impatience before Rapide would finally budge. She is fearful of Fia's chastisement, which amounts to Fia waiting for her and then grabbing a chunk of neck fur, just below her ear, to drag her where Fia knows I want Rapide to go. She received the same from her daughter Baccarat.

That says something.

It wasn't long before I let Fia go. She went nowhere; she was too interested in making sure that Rapide did what I wanted, and leash back in hand, Fia trotted to the top of the steps, down the three flights and right up to the sliding electronic door, waited, trotted out and promptly squatted next to the granite stoop, before letting go a torrent of scalding pipi that cascaded down the sidewalk, steaming. I am not sure the passersby shared my pride in her.

The next day, and each day after that, the room went unscathed, the carpet in the hallway unbaptised, and the stoop unsoiled. We paid the customary charges for our dogs, but, like I said to Sam, you pay more for two people in the room, and still more for three, so it makes sense you pay a little something for your dogs, even when they are quieter, and possibly neater, than your British neighbors.

Today, a week after our return from Argentière, the wood garden gate came down. It will be out in the garage for the next puppy, and like I did with Fia this time, I will be sure to give that puppy lots of undivided, one-on-one attention and training.

Starting again four years after Baccarat was a puppy, I suspected that having left the two dogs -- mother and daughter -- always together and always bringing them both with me made Baccarat less attentive to me as her mistress, and I believe that my hunch was correct; each dog needs to have a direct relationship with her mistress, access to her pack, lots of exercise, good food, and clear, consistent rules with all members of her family, and a structured life. I am also a firm believer in any version of crate training as a primary tool in achieving the rest to make a well-adjusted, well-behaved, trustworthy dog.

This might be the moment, however, to mention the bêtise Fia reminds me I forgot. Socks. I cannot leave a sock or a pair of socks anywhere within reach of this rapidly growing dog, which leaves fewer and fewer safe havens.

Like the ski sock she retrieved from the sofa before I had a chance to put it on. By the time I reached for it, it was in handing from her mouth, the top of the sock gnawed and damp, the elastic dangling.

....

At rest

The Argentière glacier at sunrise

We went away, and now we are returning.

In a few minutes. We are not in a hurry. We are never in a hurry to leave the vallée. It has become home for at least one long week a year, but one long week, however long, is not enough. Not if you love winter, snow, mountains, long walks with your dogs in the forest below tree line and skiing the rocky slopes above.

The dogs have been a godsend. No one should travel anywhere without dogs if they wish to meet the locals and anyone staying longer than a week, usually, however long. They are conversation starters when you cross others with theirs, walking in the forest. They attach you to a place in a way just walking alone does not, and sometimes, they become part of a place, like Baccarat.

We brought her back, like we promised ourselves we would do. For months, her ashes remained in a plastic bag, sealed with a twist-tie, inside a hideous, cheap, but certainly well-intentioned Delft china style urn provided by the crematorium (a word I do not like) in a pristinely white cardboard box, a white envelope containing a certificate attesting to the ashes really being those of our dog, Baccarat, taped with equally pure white tape to it, all inside a plastic bag from our vet's office. I put it up on a storage mezzanine in the petite maison to wait until our time to leave again for Argentière, and every time I'd go in to make up a bed for a guest or iron in the Summer room, I'd look up to the bag, sitting above my head next to an over-sized and unused lampshade and say, "Hello, Bacs."

It made me very uncomfortable. She needed to get to her place. But, time eventually passed and the day came to pack the car and drive off to Chamonix. I went for the plastic bag, containing the urn, holding her ashes in the plastic bag sealed with a twist-tie, and carried it to the car to join the bags, the skis, and Rapide and Fia for the trip back to the valley. And then, the bag and its contents sat on the daybed in our hotel room on the pile of luggage, waiting.

"Where will we leave her?" I asked Sam. "In the forest, or shall we take her up to the top of the mountain, over the glacier?"

"I don't know. Maybe both," he said, "But let's take some home." I considered that for a moment.

"You mean divide her in three? You think that's alright?"

"I don't know," he said. "I guess so."

And so, a day, and then two, and finally a third went by, and the box sat still on the daybed with the bags. Then, I got up on the fourth day and heard a voice.

When are you going to finally get around to doing this? asked myself. The prodding self that makes me get things done, including the most unpleasant and difficult things.

"I'll ask Sam."

I think, said myself, that he is waiting for you to get around to it. How about now?

Now. I set the plastic bag on the table and removed the box, peeled back the white tape, removed the envelope with the certificate, removed the tape from the cheap Delft style urn and opened it. There was still the matter of removing the bag of ashes, which was larger than the mouth of the urn. I got three small Ziplock bags and prepared to pour Baccarat into them in equal parts, without spilling any of her on the floor for housekeeping to sacrilege by vacuuming her unceremoniously up. Dust puffed up. I was breathing. I was breathing in Baccarat. I tried to breathe less.

Sam opened his eyes and watched the procedure from his bed.

"We'll take one bag up with us today, and go all the way up. Don't worry. I'll double-bag it."

I was remembering the incident from the previous day when the bag containing the apricots, figs, almonds, a clementine and half a banana exploded open in his Dakine backpack. I was sure he was envisioning Baccarat clinging to every surface of the inside of his backpack in yet another scenario of sacrilege, and this was not meant to be humorous or catastrophic in any way.

We took the téléphérique up to Grands Montets, just below the Aiguille Verte, Europe's highest ski trail, and began skiing down the black along the glacier, "Point de Vue".

Where will you leave her? asked myself. The opportunities were sailing past us the farther along we skied.

"I'll ask Sam."

"Sam?" He slowed and turned to look back up at me; I am generally somewhere up behind him. I slid in next to where he waited. "Where will we put her?"

He looked around the mountainside, "Maybe where we stopped and had lunch last year."

I nodded. That would do. It was a place that looked out over the glacier, and it was a place where we had stopped to share a meal. We skied on until we arrived at the place and took off our skis, trying not to slide down the side of the mountain into a crevasse. We did not wish to spend the rest of eternity with Baccarat, up on the glacier.

"How will we do this?" I asked, looking around at the various stones poking up out of the hard scrabble dirt and sparse tufts of golden grass, snow blown up into ridges under the little overhangs they provided. He concentrated and chose a stone. We made our way down to it, sliding on our bottoms and using the heels of our ski boots to dig in.

"I can't reach," I said, watching him finish his hole with the point of my ski pole. I had inched down a little too far and inching back up seemed too much like tempting fate.

He reached down, took the bag I held out to him and poured her ashes into their hole, and then he moved his hand in an arc, brushing snow up to cover them, trying to pat down the powdery snow. I joined his effort, brushing the light coating of feather-light snow off the stubbly yellow grass and ice to cover her deeper, and I felt a tear slide down into the foam of my goggles, and then another. We stood and made our way back up to our skis. I looked back.

"Be a good dog, Baccarat," I said, and realized they were my last words to her when I left her in her cage the night before her surgery. Silly words. "Of course you will be. You were the best dog."

I felt better, but there was the place to choose in the forest.

Sam came with me for our evening walk, after it was dark and we would be alone on the trails through the giant firs. We considered a first and then a second place.

"It shouldn't be so close to the main trail," said Sam. We turned down toward the stream.

"This is where Baccarat ran into the freezing water and got all soaked that first night," I said.

We walked along, looking at trees. Sam has become fascinated with trees, taking photographs of them like I do on my morning walks. He stopped by a tall fir, growing out of the hillside on the other side of the trail from the stream bank. We stood silently, Fia and Rapide nosing around our legs. I wondered if they understood our purpose. Rapide, anyway, although it was Fia I suspected of understanding.

"Do you want to do it here?" I asked.

"This is the first place she came into the forest," he said.

The tree divided at its base, sending roots down into the soil, and where it did, it formed two small, perfect chambers. They looked like the rooms of her heart that filled with the tumor that killed her. It looked like the perfect place to nestle part of her. I climbed up the turf, covered in soft fir needles and encased in crusty snow, and Sam turned the torch on his iPhone on for me so I could see to pour her ashes into the smaller chamber, like the place where the tumor grew, and covered them with tiny fir needles and some chunks of snow and then a rock.

We walked on home, to the hotel, and a day or two later, I took the white box and the Delft china style urn to the garbage and recycling bins and tossed the urn in one and the box in the other. That was the moment I felt the freest and the lightest since the phone rang while we waited during her surgery. We had done what we had set out to do, and Baccarat's circle was complete.

The third bag is for home in Mousseaux. Perhaps I will ask the mason to build a little chamber under the stone at the top of the steps which she made her outlook, surveying the lower garden, the field and the Seine and the world beyond. In that chamber, I can put a little box containing the other third of her in her garden.

....

Taking the long view from up close

Frost on the fields

I find that the views I take here tend both to the distance and to the very close-up. It's the garden and the view. If they teach things other than how to kill and maybe manage not to kill a plant (they are hard, usually, to kill, especially when you don't want them, but even when you actually do) and how to get lost in thought, they teach you to look and to notice both the large picture of the world that surrounds you and the tiny details of that world.

This is very useful in times of difficulty, when you usually hear Keep your eyes on the big picture every time something goes wrong and your stamina threatens to quit. This is when it is time to notice the very small things and forget all about the big picture for 5 minutes. It's often the smallest things that will get you through and maybe even see your way to whatever goal you are presently cursing yourself for fixing yourself.

Goals are not what they are cracked up to be. You have to be very careful with them or you can get yourself in a lot of trouble, like when someone close to you says, "You take in dogs and cats, why not a child? Don't over rationalize it."

No, do. Do over rationalize it. I implore you.

But, you think You know, you're right. How noble. It's the right thing, really. Just do it. Swelling with all the nobility your breast can contain, suddenly you hear your very own voice saying to that child's other parent, the noncustodial one, "Let's take her."

Rather like that same parent did when our first Labrador Retriever breeder asked back in 2006 if we would take Baccarat's mother, Rapide, too. That time it was he who said, "We'll take her," and he regretted it ever since he pronounced the words into the low September noon sun.

Fateful words, those. Everything changes. You say them, and there is no going back, at least not until you have gone.

I prepared a contract while she prepared her things and he went to get her after work the next day. It was a statement of our parenting intention and how our household works, and a promise to fulfill our obligations to her in return for her promise to uphold our minimum expectations of her.

Her room having been a cross between a war zone and public dump since I have known her, a period nearing one decade, I decided to begin with a spotless room, emptied of all but essentials: books, school supplies, bed, beside lamp, desk, chair, desk lamp, laundry hamper, closet and drawers prepared and waiting. Everything dusted and vacuumed. It was to stay that way. No clothes strewn all over the floor, no tiny scraps of paper adorning every dusty surface, no bowls of Nestle Quick with a spoon burrowed into the back of the desk drawer, barrettes, beads, pen caps, markers, cards, bits of games, pouches, and worn orphan socks and inside-out underpants clogging the underside of the bed, the edge of the woven straw floor covering, collecting dust bunnies larger than her dwarf hamster. In exchange, she would do no heavy cleaning, no unfair share of household chores.

That's my job. That's why I got my degree in architecture.

She would also spend time in the living room and participate in family life, read with us in the evening, do her homework with her father and myself and accept our direction and help, learning to use her brain for reflection and deduction, refrain from using such winning phrases as "Je m'en fiche" (I don't care), "J'en ai marre" (I'm sick of ________), "J'ai pas" (I don't know in slang), "Ba --" (uh or well, as in "well" at the beginning of a feeble explanation), all pronounced in a tone of voice more suited to someone raised in a crack house and not the households of a midwife and a doctor and a cleaning lady with an architect's resume.

In return, she would have more free time in her room for her Nintendo DS and text messaging all her multitude of correspondents, more time at the stables, and the possibility of inviting friends over, as long as the grades are on an upward curve, right along with the attitude.

The first evening went beautifully. We sailed over obstacles that seemed on a level with the sand. By a few days later, as we embarked on a new week, the obstacles looked more like the high jump from our seat on the wide back of a Shetland pony without stirrups. We ran into more than a few, but here's the thing: with children, you are not allowed to give up. You must go on, and they are not anywhere near as cooperative, desirous of pleasing and devoted as your dogs, nor as capable as your cats. There is nothing whatsoever in common between opening your heart to animals and to children.

Nothing.

Dogs may fart and not excuse themselves for making the air temporarily unbreathable (where does the stink go when it goes away?), but they rarely poison the environment with supreme "je m'en foutisme".

Cats may let you know that you are superfluous to them until they decide you are not, but they will rarely let you know you would be welcome to die and go to hell until they need you to prepare another meal.

And yet, their parents love them, and their responsible non-parent steps actually care about them, at least because of their great caring for their spouse, if nothing else, which is not always the case. Sometimes it is because you notice something in the child, something that once you catch a glimpse of it, no matter that it might be fleeting, you cannot forget when they deride your hopes for them, and even those they have for themselves, with their most majestic and taunting insolence.

I dare you to believe in me. I will not. I will show you that you are wrong, and nothing will give me greater pleasure or satisfaction.

Even there, when you look very closely into their eyes, you can see the fear. A question. Panic.

These they wish they could hide, and if you tell them you can see them, if you let them know that you will not give them the conflict they are demanding, that you will not permit them not to back out of the hole they are digging for themselves and correct their behavior, they will tell you Tu n'es pas dans ma tête, and perhaps laugh with deep discomfort because you have visited inside their head and seen the broken furnishings, the scribblings on the wall, the disorder. It does not comfort them to know that you can see and that you will not run. If it does, you will not know this. They will not let you.

It would be best if you simply know and act accordingly.

It takes every ounce of self-mastery to remain calm, repeating the same messages, expressing the same confidence, guiding and commanding without appearing to order, avoiding -- at all cost to oneself -- that drug of dearly beloved conflict, for if anger is but sadness and fear in its most primitive expression, conflict is sadness and fear become active, and finally habit. It's all you can offer and all you can ask.

I suspected when I said "Alright, let's take her" that the peace I had known with her would be replaced with a struggle to the death to create conflict where there had been little to recreate the relationship she had with her mother. It made me soften a bit towards her mother, but not that much. That's another story. It's a novel, or a piece for the theater, for if things had gotten to this, it was not because of a faulty wire in the daughter's head that can be fixed by a psychologist or even better parenting. It is a whole system of poor wiring, created by genes on the one hand and chemicals from responses to the stimuli of a difficult family environment on the other, and it is going to take a team to awaken the unused sensory and intellectual paths to success.

So much easier to stay the paths of non-responsibility, conflict and pain learned by the committed je m'en foutiste, with that maddening angry glare and hysterical grin. But, you have seen something. The moments when it slips because genuine excitement and pleasure have momentarily left no place for anger and self-defense.

This is what you cling to. This is how the details get you to the big picture.

"Regards," I pointed to the kitchen table. My husband's eyes followed my arm and my extended finger to where the SIM card lay on the Nintendo DS. He nodded.

"Elle tient le contrat alors," he said to me, with a slight suggestion that I had accused her of breaking the contract merely by yelling at me that none of her other friends had to have one to live with their fathers.

"Si je te la monte c'est parce que je le sais," I replied.

If I brought his attention to her SIM card lying there in that spot after she had gone up to bed, I told him, it was because I know she is honoring the contract at heart, as best as she can, while fuming about it at the same time. I knew it was a gesture of cooperation, the most important thing we had asked of her other than trust and respect.

I took a bright pink Post-it note from the drawer and a black marker, and I traced the shape of the SIM card on it, placing an arrow pointing to the image of the card below and a smiley face inside. Then, I stuck it to its place on the DS where she had left it and lay the SIM card back down in its little home.

When she came down to find it on the way to school in the morning, she would find recognition and thanks, too. I hoped I would find more strength for another day, clinging to the smallest details.

The struggle itself is enough to make a woman happy.

She hopes and prays.
....

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.
....

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.
....

Fia, 8 weeks

Fia in B&W

Yup, I went back to see Fia and play with her yesterday afternoon, but I almost never got there, owing to a comedy (note: comedy is rarely funny when you are the subject of it) of errors involving discovering my husband drained the battery on my motorcycle flat as a pancake only after I finally managed to maneuver it past a parked vehicle and the telephone booth in front of the telephone company facility next door and onto the street, just in time to block the one car heading up the street in the last 15 or 20 minutes, and for the next 15 or 20 minutes. Alright, I exaggerate. 5 minutes. Happily, it was a neighbor, who jumped out to help me wheel it back up on the sidewalk, while I stripped off my heavy leather jacket and gloves and sighed heavily. I had been outside a quarter of an hour, and I was already hot, sweaty and tired. The weather had warmed up and turned humid, but I'd be taking a car.

I emptied the topcase, fished my house keys out of my bag and headed back in the house. Rapide lifted her head and looked at me. They say dogs have a poor notion of time, but I think even she realized that I hadn't gotten very far.

I considered changing my clothes, but limited myself to stowing my helmet, gloves and exchanging my 10 lb. leather jacket for my light suede jacket, grabbed the keys to the -- oh, to hell with gas economy! -- the BMW wagon and headed out to the car, nearly swiping the front bumper of the neighbor's minivan with ours.

And, I had just trumpeted my excellent, practically sixth sense of the BMW's orientation in space relative to other cars when I came very close to touching the rear bumper of another car (but didn't) pulling into the parking area from the restaurant of the Hotel Baudy in Giverny the other evening. It was our anniversary (8th for the curious), and the grocery store had closed early, "exceptionally", for their annual wine fair, so I wasn't getting the few things I needed to make the dinner I had planned, dumped my recycling in the bins and drove home to -- pout.

I put backed up, corrected my angle and pulled out, just as another car drove up the street. It was for him to ranger sa caisse, since he was on the "side of the road" -- a bit of an exaggeration, given that our road is one lane, after you account for parked cars -- where the cars were parked, but since I had sort of pulled out in front of him, I pulled back in between two cars just on the other side of the minivan before heading out of town. I was making little progress, fast. The car wasn't far from the reserve tank, though, and I took the route that let me go by the gas station at the grocery store (they're the cheapest ones here). I pulled up to a pump, cut the engine and reached for my wallet -- and, that's when I realized that I had changed jackets, but I had taken my bank card or my driver's license from the pocket of my motorcycle jacket.

This is where I consider myself to be superior in development to my husband. I said nothing. I did not swear. I did not either bang my fist down upon the steering wheel or make one to begin with. I sighed -- heavily, I admit -- and drove back home, avoiding the large potholes in the street that heads back up alongside the grocery store.

Home again, I swung the car into the space next to the old school, converted into three apartments by the village that no one seems interested in renting, retrieved my house keys and let myself in the gate and then the house. This time, Rapide had come to the door.

"Désolée, ma biche. Je repars."

I peeled off my suede jacket, and headed upstairs to change my clothes (it was just too hot, and too humid, and I was too aggravated to deal with hit), late or no.

You know you'll walk right back out the house without them the way you're going, said myself. Take them out before you forget.
I harrumphed by way of acknowledgment. This was likely, and so, halfway up the stairs, I turned and headed back down to get the bank card and driver's license before pirouetting and heading back up. I watched Rapide's head swivel first one way, as I had come back down, follow me from the jacket to the kitchen table, where I put everything in my bag, and then the other as she followed my progress back up the stairs, where I yanked off my boots, jeans and tights and my sweater in favor of bare legs in my jeans and sneakers and a light cotton blouse.

Everything was better in the world right away.

This time, I headed back out, got my gas, and made it all the way to Chartres to run into -- a traffic jam. The mothers in their minivans in front of me were doing U-turns and heading back up the way we'd come. It seemed like a good idea. They turned right, toward the city, and I turned left to thread my way through villages to Thivars and the entry to the A11, direction Le Mans, texting a message as I drove through the fields:

Tout faux aujourd'hui. Je ferai demi-tour afin de vous laisser tranquille mais je vous ai préparé un p'tit quelque chose.

I signed my name.

It's true. I had raced through the recipe for Rachel's Raspberry Financiers before racing through my shower. It's not nice to arrive empty-handed, and her son's birthday was Monday, after my son's and my own.

It was 5 pm by the time I arrived, and she'd been sanding the old worm-eaten wood in the wall from which she'd removed the plaster, opening the dining room up to the living room. We're both renovating, by ourselves, but she's actually still doing something, despite 20-something dogs, her kids and a rotating group of interns to manage. She was emptying the shop vac when I got out of the car.

"Oh! Vous êtes là," she looked startled. I was sure she had given up on me and probably hadn't gotten my message.

"Vous n'avez pas eu mon message alors?" I asked.

"Non, mais ça ne fait rien. Entrez," she said, dumping the wood dust into the gravel by the front step.

"Je suis navrée," I said, fiddling with the latch on the gate, "mais j'ai eu tout faux aujourd'hui."

"Comment?" she asked, watching me pull the gate toward me and seeing it jam. "Dan l'autre sens, poussez-le." Oh, push.

"J'ai tout fait faux aujourd'hui. Je n'ai rien fait comme il fallait."

"Il y a des jours comme ça," she said. "Allez, c'est temps de donner à manger aux petits et puis on prendra un café." I handed her my paper plate of Raspberry Financiers in a big Ziploc freeze bag, and she put them on the table before we headed back out to feed the puppies. I had arrived just in time for dinner, and to help her keep 11 wriggling bodies from escaping through the grille.

Not that it mattered. As soon as they heard the kibbles hit the metal platter, they were scrambling to get back and find a place around it.

I said I'd not stay long, but she didn't seem in a rush to see my back out the drive and across the fields on my way home. We had coffee, interrupted by the need to prevent TVA from slipping out a hole she had contrived in the fence and get the intern to focus on his work, the last seeming to give her a bigger headache than TVA's antics, and we played with Fia and watched her play with anything that would play with her: Tina the Bulldog, a little, half-deflated Paris-St. Germain soccer ball, TVA, and I took rapid-fire photographs with Sam's camera.

It's much better than mine.

It was 7 pm by the time I headed out and went to look for a boulangerie before driving back home, where it was certain my husband would arrive before I did. At the very least, I could have baguette for him for his dinner.

"Alors," he said when I came through the door, "elle va comment, la petite? Tu as pris des photos? Je peux les voir?" Yes, yes, I said. I took lots of photos, but first, dinner, then I will download them, and show you.

"Maintenant on peut voir les photos?" he asked after dinner.

"Oui, mais ça prend du temps à télécharger. Attends un instant."

"Ben," he said, "je vais faire la vaiselle le temps que ça met à télécharger." He returned when he and the camera had finished, and sat down to look at them with me. If bonding has begun when Sam starts taking photos of the puppy, it has also begun when Audouin starts looking at photos of the puppy. I had been a little worried when he told me at dinner at the Hôtel Baudy that he hadn't begun his grieving for Baccarat yet.

"Non?" I asked. "Mais, tu comptes commencer ça quand? Ca fait bientôt deux mois qu'elle est morte, tu sais." He nodded. He knew it had been nearly two months since we lost Baccarat, but he didn't know when he'd start grieving. He was a little surprised that I wasn't anymore.

"Non," I told him, "je fais encore mon deuil de Baccarat, mais je peux aimer encore une autre chienne."

"Mais, tu ne peux pas remplacer Baccarat," he said to me. "Tu risques de la comparer toujours avec elle."

I knew that too. I could never replace Baccarat, and I will always compare every other dog with her, and I will always remember her, just as much in a year or two, or more, as I do now.

"C'est une autre chienne à apprendre à connaître et à aimer, et oui, je la comparerai à Baccarat, mais Baccarat m'aidera, et elle continuera à me manquer, autant dans l'avenir qu'aujourd'hui."

I will always miss Baccarat, even as she helps me get to know and appreciate, to teach and help Fia be a wonderful dog. As Audouin saw, she is playful and full of personality. She is little, still a baby.



"Quand est-ce qu'elle vient à la maison?" he asked. "Et celui-là, il est adorable," he added, pointing to a black male puppy in the middle of the group under their mother behind the gate.

Next Friday she'll come home. She'll be sad not to have her brothers and sisters at first, and I have to fight asking if that little boy isn't, par aucune chance, still available, but there will be Rapide to win over the cats to tame. I think she's up to it.

Sam will take a train from Paris to meet me on the way, and we'll go together to get her. He had suggested that I go get her on a Friday, and he'd come out on Saturday, saying, "That way, she'll know me, too," but I thought this would be even better.
....