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.

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.
....

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.
....

And baby makes...

Home, sweet home

Well, that depends on the day. If it's during the week, but not on a Thursday, it makes 6 (if you don't count the fish, which are really hard to count, and the frogs, which are worse, not even considering the even more elusive toads). If you count Thursdays, well that would make 7, and if you count the weekends, then it would be 7, also, except the first and the third, and eventually the fifth, if there is a fifth weekend in the month, in which case, depending on the hour of the day, it could get to as many as 9.

In any event, today Fia comes home. Her bed is ready, the gate is reinstalled, except for the hook, which I can't find, but I'll throw something together to keep it closed and her in there. I think Rapide might be suspecting something is up; the gate appears to evoke an association in the fog of her memory. Not to mention the washing of the various dog cushions and their placement behind the gate. She watched with especial interest as I took Baccarat's food bowl out of the pots and pans cupboard, filled it with water and placed it in the furthest corner from the smallest cushion. She was not present when I scattered some "cookies" in the other corner, hoping to associate it with feeding and not with the relieving of one's tiny, unprincipled little bladder.

Fia nearly didn't come home today. The breeder called this morning, sounding very upset. She told me that several of the puppies were sick in response to their weaning, and Fia was one of them. I knew she fears this because she talked to me about it early on, and it's what she is firm in not releasing puppies to their new homes until they are at least 2 months old -- to the day, and not one before. But, it doesn't always happen.

Today, it did.

There was worse: one of the black males had died. Fia had lost a brother, and this was what explained her sounding so particularly distraught. I felt so badly for her. Who says breeder's don't feel for their animals? She told me that she would call as soon as she thought Fia was out of danger, as soon as she was eating properly again, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. I told her there was no rush. The important thing was that she felt reassured and safe releasing her puppies to their mistresses and to their masters. We could certainly wait. I sent a text message to Sam and consoled myself in The Mill on the Floss.

The phone rang again. It was the breeder a second time. She still sounded frazzled and upset, but she said that it turned out Fia was not affected. She was fine, and we could come and get her as planned. It was, she explained, the upset over the little boy puppy that had thrown her off, but with more time, she could better tell who was at risk, and who was not. Fia was alright.

I felt a little surge of pride in her. Absurd, but it's true, I did, and I threw down my book, put my cup of coffee, grown cold beside me, aside and headed to the kitchen to prepare my scrambled eggs and the only thing for which I had all the ingredients after the two eggs for my breakfast: more raspberry financiers. Then, I went and retrieved the garden gate I bought for Baccarat to make a little fenced-off corner in the otherwise open ground floor of the house for Fia, plugged in the power drill and screwed the hinges back into their old places and discovered the hooks I had bought would not work. Tant pis, I thought, I can use what I have and tie it shut until I find the right thing again. The guy over at the nearest Bricomarché had been particularly and singularly ignorant and unhelpful when I went for new hooks the day before yesterday.

"Er, vous les avez achetez ici la dernière fois?" he had asked, looking at his offerings like he had no idea what was in front of him even, let alone what I was describing.

"Oui. Je les ai acheté chez Bricomarché." As if that mattered. It is only about the most basic thing in the world, but this is only the worst Bricomarché I have ever seen. They carry only the most obvious basics, terrified of stocking what might not sell and going out of business. Merci beaucoup.

Now, the financiers are packed and ready to go, the sun has come out after a gloomy morning, Sam will be heading out to meet me now that his classes are over for the week, and perhaps Fia will be relieved and grateful to be here after the trauma of the morning. I expect her to cry this night, alone for the first time behind her garden gate.

Perhaps I will paint it this time and see if that cheers her up if she is sad.

I really do need to get that old door out and get the new kitchen entry built, too, not to mention change the cabinetry and refinish the table, and get something to put on the floor under it and refinish the walls and take the bottles to the glass recycling.

Note the empty Lillet bottle, those of you to whom this might mean something.
....

Meet Fia Lux

Fia Lux de la Pellousery
4 weeks old

Born August 5, 2010

Labradors de la Pellousery
La Tonnelière
Charbonnières, France

If anyone still comes around here, I will tell you that things did not exactly work out as I had hoped, but simply as they did, but first, allow me to offer my apologies for a long absence. The longest ever.

I thought that last week, we would be going to pick up "Fun" from the breeder in Normandy and struggling to find a name beginning with F for her (2010 is a F year in France, where all registered dogs born in any given year must have a name beginning with that year's letter), but I learned the week before that what I had rather begun to fear was true. The breeder had decided not to sell us the young dog we had seen and with whom we had fallen in love back in the middle of August, just as we were preparing to leave for our three weeks of vacation. For once, I will not give any details. It was a very big disappointment, and I felt rather bitter and angry, but that was not going to change anything. All the way back from Brittany in the car I thought about it and winced when we passed the exit on the highway that leads to her home and kennel. I hardly spoke on that long ride, but that wasn't unusual; my husband isn't "un communicatif", as he says, to excuse his own silences. I was considering what to do. Should I leave it at that, or should I write and tell her of our disappointment, of my husband's for me, although he found her uniquely attractive, too, and my own?

He could still live very well without another dog, and having shared some of that with her might have been what decided it against us despite all she knew we had done for Baccarat, when we learned she had a tumor in her heart. I continued to think about it once we were at home, and then I wrote an email. I told her how we felt about her withdrawing her offer of sale, and I reiterated what would be our joy at coming to get this dog, should she change her mind. I have no pictures of "Fun", but the few moments we spent with her will be enough never to forget her. I said that there could be no question but that a dog is happiest in the center of the love of a family, and that it would be best to place her there earlier rather than later, particularly as there is a chance that she will not chose to breed her when it will be desirable, in a little more than 2 years. The breeder knew that she is considering retirement, and she will be nearly 80 then.

But, there was no reply to this email, nor to the one I sent to tell her that a contact had told us about a breeder in the not far away Perche, who had a 4-month-old male and female she had saved from a litter, one of which she had decided she should sell. We could have the female, if we chose, or a 4-week-old who would be available in early October. I told our breeder that we would still be happiest to come get "Fun", were there any chance she should yet consider renewing her offer, but there was no reply, and so I left for the Perche, ayant fait une croix sur "Fun".

Sam went with me on a beautiful September afternoon last week, except for when we drove through patches of rain, with big white clouds sailing in a bright, clear blue sky, the recently harvested fields shining, despite their stubble. We drove as we would do to go to my husband's parents' home, but turned onto the A11 in Thivars, just past Chartes on the route to Châteaudun, drove to the exit at Luigny and then along the country roads to the sign 6 kilometers from the church in Luigny. 2.5 kilometers later, we drove into the drive at La Tonnelière. Sam had already spotted the kennels, and the dogs came forward to great us in their little groups, divided by color and fraternity, in their large, clean cages under the trees.

The breeder turned out to be inside with another client, who had come to pick up the 3 10-week-olds in the fenced-in space in front of her home. They would eventually leave with a woman in a compact car for not far from our home.

"I wonder," Sam would remark, "how she is going to make it home with 3 puppies in that car."

I was, in fact, feeling rather proud of myself for having the wagon with a dog gate in the back, unlike 4 years ago, when I drove home with Rapide and tiny Baccarat at 8 weeks of age, held back only by the netting you can roll up and fix in place that comes standard equipment on a BMW wagon. Rapide hardly saw that as more than a minor discouragement to her panicked need to get the hell out of the back end and at least be with me, the closest thing to her old mistress that she could identify in that car.

It had not been an illustrious start.

It turns out these are the 6th, 7th and the 8th dogs this woman has brought home over the years from la Pellousery. Maybe gates aren't necessary, after all.

The breeder came out and we introduced ourselves and shook hands, and then she led us to the three dogs in a cage over to the side I thought might contain the 4-month-old in question. There was one of each color, and they looked to be the right size, and they were, let us say, energetic. She hauled her out of the pen and the little dog jumped and trotted around us, a whole other affair from "Fun". I spoke to her and looked her over. She had a well-formed head with a pronounced stop, huge paws and a promising tail, and when the breeder suggested to the young intern (everyone seems young these days) from the veterinarian technician program not far away that she show us how the puppy walks on leash, it was true that there was some reason to be impressed. She did not pull in the least, but she did cross sides.

That, I thought, is easy enough to correct.

We let her off leash and fell to chatting, while the dog played around us, the other client left, and so do the breeder's sister, and the puppy lay down to rest.

Well, I thought, she can do that, too, at least.

It occurred to me that I was comparing her to "Fun" a little too much, and doing it with a little too much disappointment. I longed to ask Sam for his opinion, and when I had my chance, he told me that he didn't "feel" her. I knew what he meant, and I asked to see the 4-week-old, who was brought out to us goodnaturedly, and she settled into my chest in my hands and hung on.

It was heaven.

I had never been able to hold Baccarat like that. She was already 8 weeks old and too wiggly. They grow fast between 4 and 8 weeks, and it's just not the same creature. This little one was just beginning to see better, her ears to detach, and to walk. She was hardly more than a newborn. She yawned over and over again before settling into a mewling cry, and we talked, and she was happy to lick me with that new pink tongue and puppy breath. She smelled of the litter in which she and her litter mates lay with their mother, like a hamster or a mouse. I offered her to Sam, who looked a little panicked and said that no, I could hold her. The breeder laughed. I leaned up against the car next to him, and we talked on, while I wondered what Sam thought.

An opportunity presented itself to speak speak together quietly, and he said the same thing I was thinking, the older puppy lacked a certain finesse that Baccarat had, that "Fun" had, too, I thought, and we'd have more time with this puppy to watch it grow and see what she would become. The breeder returned, and I handed the puppy to Sam, who looked a little consternated again.

"Prends-la pour que je puisse m'occuper de la plus grande," I said, leaving him no choice. The breeder understood what I was doing.

He hesitated but I put her into his hands and bent down to the bigger puppy. When I looked up, she had settled right into the open front of his zippered sweatshirt, looking right at home, and he was already looking as relaxed as she did. The phone rang, and the breeder went inside, but the intern was still with us, and when she came back, Sam returned the puppy to me, and got out his iPhone to take pictures of her. It seemed like as good a way to announce a decision had been made as any, and I told her that while the older puppy was wonderful, we had decided to start all over again from scratch with a little baby. She smiled, and the older puppy fell asleep at our feet while we went on talking about dog food, the growing number of cancers likely due to the quality of what we feed our dogs, the failure of her refrigerators during the terrible heatwave of 2003 and how she was expecting her last child then, when she had to empty all that rotting meat out of them, rags wrapped around her face to try to keep from smelling the stinking meat. Finally, it was time to feed the dogs, the older puppy returned to her brother and friend, and we went inside to do the reservation paperwork at her dining table.

Sam asked me to put her down on the table to see her walk, and she took a few steps before lying down and putting her head on my open hand and falling sound asleep. The rest of the litter mewled away in the next room, but a good bark from their mother silenced them, and we all laughed. The breeder's eldest son had come home by then, followed not long after by her youngest two and a downpour.

"Mom," said Sam with some urgency, "you left the car open."

"Yes?" I asked, wondering why he was telling me this. Why should I have locked the car at a breeder's in the middle of the Perche, not another soul in sight for at least 2 kilometers.

"Mom, the car. You left the roof open --" I must have still been staring with incomprehension, lost in the puppy in my hand, because he added, "It's raining."

"Oh! Can you close it, please?"

"I need the keys, Mom. The keys." I understood. He needed the keys. The keys, you know, to turn the ignition enough for a contact for the sunroof. Puppies make you as dumb as babies do.

We will return in 3 or 4 weeks, whenever the breeder, Florence Sivadier, feels that the puppy can leave and come home to us, but I might just have to break down and go visit her again between now and then. I know very well what she will be like in 3 weeks when she will be 8 weeks old, and I wouldn't mind having a few more moments of 5 or of 6 weeks.

In the car, Sam said, "It's a good thing we got the little one, Mom. Can you imagine if we had brought the older one home and she had gone crashing into Audouin's legs?"

I knew just what he meant. It would have been a little -- abrupt, shall we say? This should go down a little easier. Like Baccarat, she'll have more time to wiggle into his heart.

But, I still had a name to find. I had been through what seemed like dozens of possibilities and decided that F is tough for a girl, who might not be best suited by Frazier or Fillmore or Franklin. I got out the French dictionary and skimmed the pages and made yet another list, looked at the one I had made from my perusal of the English dictionary and returned to the dog and baby name sites. I asked friends whose taste in dog names I appreciate, and whose appreciation for dogs I appreciate even more. A few possibilities were starting to gain a foothold, and I went and looked again at one I had considered, Fia.

I looked up the meaning again, and I read, "Scottish, meaning 'arising from a dark peace'".

A dark peace. Yes, there has been a sort of dark peace in the weeks since Baccarat died, and we have begun to get used to life without her. Or, perhaps a new little dog to get to know and to love, a little black dog, is a "dark peace". Another meaning, going back to the Gaelic, can be understood as "the black fairy". I had been thinking of naming "Fun" Fay, or Fée, on the way home from Normandy that day we saw her, and Fia, with its pronunciation FAY-ah, went straight back to that first thought, which Sam had vetoed with a simple "No" when I suggested Fay on the way to see this puppy.

I thought about Fia again, and asked a few friends what they thought. Labradors have their origins in Scotland and England, produced in Newfoundland by the Scottish and English fishermen who went there to fish the cold seas and returned home to hunt, and so do I. It might become Feya, a version that tells you how to pronounce it, but we shall see. I like Fia, although someone said it made her think of Fiat.

We have one of those, too.

But, another friend (who really is Scottish) pointed out that it could evoke "'Fiat lux' rather than 'Fiat Panda'- a big bang from the dark rather than misfire from Italy". I have really smart friends.

Which made me think, why not add "Lux" after "Fia", or "Fia Lux" for "light from a dark peace"?


Coincidentally, or not, the older puppy did not share the same bloodlines as the littler one, who shares the same ones with Rapide and My Boy de Saint Urbain, Baccarat's sire.

So, here we go again! At least, I tell myself, I have the time to get some things ready. We will be eating lettuce, with rice and a little meat for my husband, who actually goes to work to provide for us, the rest of the fall to make up for this, Baccarat's costs having nearly done us in. It would never have been remotely possible in the States to consider the surgery we had done in the hope that her tumor was benign, but, even so, it was still more than we could absorb without a serious halt in expenses, and here I am insisting on getting another Lab.

I can't help myself.
....

Love springs eternal

Rapide and Baccarat
April 11, 2008

Rapide was a mother. I don't know what exactly she thought about that, but Baccarat never let her forget it, except when she turned the table on her mother and mothered her. I am not used to seeing Rapide's body without some part of Baccarat's draped over her, but she won't have the littler cat, oh no. Rapide is not looking for any replacements, but I have started looking for a puppy.

How much time do you have?

I thought I'd just go see the breeder. I had emailed her to let her know how the surgery had gone, and then I didn't hear from her. I figured it was her Internet service. She is not of the generation that does not know how to live without it, and her cell phone number is on her website. If you are interested in a puppy she has available, or wish to reserve one if there has been a "saillie", well, you can call her. I am allergic to the phone.

That's why I have time to write.

She emailed me back to express her sadness at Baccarat's death, and she told me to call her; we could talk. I wrote back and said that I was thinking more of coming to see her, if that would be alright, as early as the next day, if it wouldn't be an imposition, and my husband could be convinced.

"Je ne comprends pas vraiment cette manip," he commented as I climbed up on the back of his huge motorcycle behind him. I didn't answer, and he started off toward Pont l'Evêque, which is not far from the breeder's little farm where she breeds Black and Chocolate Labrador Retrievers and thoroughbreds for the track and jumping in her own small operation. She has been there for 27 years, having left Rambouillet, and her husband, too, I believe, that long ago.

He did understand the "manip". He simply didn't want me to think that he was of the same mind and heart.

We rode through the rain in our matching rain gear and on to the village near her for lunch at a little restaurant and inn, Les Deux Tonneaux. The sky began to clear over the rolling green hills that had until recently been more evocative of Southern California than of the Pays d'Auge until the rain began in August as we ate a Norman lunch involving cheese, pork and apples in their brut cider form. It was delicious. It was nourishing. I was happy.

I was going to see puppies.

We got lost. We thought we remembered the way from the church across from the restaurant the last 2 or 3 kilometers, and we started out from the church twice before we finally tried one lane we had overlooked, passed a local family in their little car and heard directions we recognized right away. We were on the right road.

So much for phones that fail when you need them. Locals in a small agricultural community can be relied on every time, unless they happen to be nurturing a grudge, like they kind of do against the breeder for having come amongst them from Paris nearly three decades ago.

"Déjà ils ne s'entendent entre eux," said the breeder, shaking her head, "mais quand il s'agit de quelqu'un de l'extérieure qui vient parmi eux, ils mettent leurs disputes de côté pour se réunir contre vous." She chuckled. Already, she said, they don't get along between themselves. But, when it comes to a stranger coming amongst them, they put their disputes aside to unite against you, but they hadn't succeeded in making her go away in 30 years, and at 76, she wasn't contemplating picking up her house and farm and going anywhere else.

She showed us two litters of Jack Russells she had available, 5 and 7 weeks of age. She had intended to have one, but, oops. That's how it goes sometimes. She's a little less particular about her Jacks. And then, we fell to talking about Baccarat. She looked off toward a stable door, saying, "Bon, qu'est-ce que je peux faire pour ça?", and walked off to open it. A small black lab, just about as high as my knee (I am not very tall), cantered out and over to sniff the grass before trotting on over to greet us.

My heart clutched. I bent down as she looked up to me and took her snout in my hand just like I used to do to Baccarat. She let me. I leaned toward her and she met me with a little kiss, the lightest touch of snouts. Had she been briefed, I wondered? She was soft. I remembered how much softer their little bodies are, and how much cuter 5 months, for that was how old I heard her telling me she was, than 8 weeks. You can see the dog they will be and they puppy they are. I rubbed my hand up and down her back and then stood to participate in the conversation. She scampered over to explore the tall grass along the fence and hedge, trotting like a Royal Lippenstein, those gigantic, beautiful paws coming impossibly high up out of that country grass.

The breeder was explaining that she was the only one left from a litter this spring. She was keeping her to breed. A beauty. She'd come back over among us, and I looked again at those prized huge paws, her sleek legs, beautiful head and that stature. She was, I thought, more beautiful than Baccarat. More standard perfect. If you care about that sort of thing. Well, I do, but Baccarat had taught me a thing or two. But, I was confused. I thought she was going to offer her to us to buy, but she was saying that she was going to keep her to breed.

"C'est quoi son prénom?" I asked.

"Elle n'en a pas encore," the breeder replied. I thought she looked at me somewhat significantly, and I felt even more confused. Did I have to want her so much that she would bring herself to part from her? I thought that was it. She had talked about a fall while caring for her horses last winter, surgery for a blood clot, and her younger son, a doctor himself, wanting her to get out of the business "at her age". This not being quite her way of thinking. She was saying that this is her life. It gives purpose and structure to her days; she loves the horses and the dogs. My husband was nodding in agreement.

Better to die working and happy than bored and lonely in your arm chair, said myself. I was thinking quite the same thing.

Past her, the little Black Lab's attention had been caught by a dandelion flower. It brushed her cheek on another sally along the fence across the narrow strip of lawn between the stable and her yard. She raised her large forepaw and batted at it. I laughed.

She thinks it's a butterfly, said myself. We laughed quietly together, watching her swap it to the ground and eat it. I shared her escapade with my husband and Madame. They chuckled.

"J'ai pensé lui prénommer 'Full of Fun' et l'appeler 'Fun', ou quelque chose," she said.

"Ca serait un bon prénom pour elle," I replied, surprising myself. I don't love names like that, but it fit her to a t.

We went over to see the yearlings in the paddock that slopes down to a woods. Over the top of the pasture grass and the trees, you can see a couple of houses nestled into the little woods among the pastures on the farther hill. The little Black Lab came along, pushing her paws under the bottom fence wire to the deep mud from the rain that had turned Madame Legrand's lawn, fields and view green again. She removed them, wet up to her chest and trotted along to where the fence met the hedge and then on along the hedge, while Madame called to her yearlings.

"Ils doivent être là-bas en train de se protéger des mouches," she explained, gesturing toward a group of trees and their shade across the paddock and calling out to them.

"Ah, les mouches," I repeated, stupidly. I was trying to pay attention, but my eyes were following the little dog. In a moment, four one-year-olds appeared from around the little Tudor style building behind us.

"C'est fou qu'ils viennent comme ça, quand vous les appelez," commented my husband, visibly awestruck by the horses appearing at the call of her voice.

We talked about her work breeding them, the low-down things some people had done, like taking her race horses off to the tracks in England, where she cannot touch a royalty on their earnings like she does by law in France. She's not in the same league, she explained with a laugh, with the big Arab stables that can put down 30,000 to 50,000 euros for an insemination. No, she's in the 5,000 euros league, but her horses sell for a decent price, and they earn pocketbooks upwards of a quarter million for their owners at places like Deauville, and a little something in royalties for her, as well, to help her keep going. The little dog had come back, and I reached down to pet her again.

She's good at amusing herself, noted myself. I had noted that, too. She was free to explore the stables and play with the horses through the fence, when she wasn't in her stable. It was a rather idyllic life for a young Lab. About the same one I could give her here, like Baccarat had had, although she'd never been as big as this little girl in her time on that farm to be able to appreciate it the same way.

Then, we went to see the three almost 2-week-old Chocolate Labs that were still with their mother in the house. Don't come in, cautioned the breeder; the mother is very protective of her little ones. She went inside and came back out with a little wrinkly puppy with a face as flat as a Persian cat. We were careful to keep our hands to ourselves so as not to upset the mother, who appeared a moment once her puppy was safely back in the low box they share for a couple more weeks.

From there, we got back on the bike and followed her back to the road and down another rough lane to where she kept other pastures and where she was building a house according to the old carpentry methods for her younger son from a mill they had taken down to move there. The pastures swept down a slope toward a fold between the hills before us. Up behind was the other set of stables she had built. Her mares were over here, grazing on their acres. The son didn't think he wanted the house anymore, and she thinks it's a bit much for her. She's used to her place. We stood on the concrete slab filled with water, looking out between the ancient framing members and the newer ones, done in the old way, and we talked awhile about family, our kids, their lives, and then we made to say good-bye. My husband apologized for taking so much of her time, but he had already done that, and I knew she hadn't minded in the least. She had offered her time. As we walked back to the motorcycle, parked near her old black Mercedes four-wheel drive, we returned to the dogs available and she reminded us of our options.

My husband had, by now, fully understood the "manip", and he was preparing himself to give in. Not, as he pointed out, that we could bring a puppy back with us, gesturing to the bike.

There was a female among the Chocolate puppies that could leave in a few weeks, and there was a 7-year-old she was looking to place, as well as the 5-month-old Black Lab. I cut her off. Did she mean the one we had seen? The one she said she was keeping? She nodded. But, hadn't she said she intended to keep that one? Yes, she had intended to keep her, she said, but -- and now it was she who looked as confused as I did earlier and probably again -- she had to be reasonable. She had to consider selling her. Poised, as she was, I thought, between wanting to continue, and needing to stop.

My heart jumped. I could have her! So, she wasn't tiny puppy butt. She wasn't just able to leave the breeder. She had a few meters on her paws, but she was the sweetest thing and full of fun. I tried to wink to tell her that I'd get my husband in line soon enough and she'd be hearing from me. I didn't say it so that he couldn't hear. He knew the "manip" by now.

That was Saturday. Today is Tuesday, and I am in a lather. I have been on the Internet, reading sites about Labrador Retrievers all over again, looking up breeders, reading sires' and dames' names. I have contacted two other breeders, just to feel less impulsive.

But I love her! wails myself, receiving a sympathetic audience from me.

She won't be a present, that much I can say, and it isn't easy to impose the cost on my husband, who lovingly did everything for Baccarat. There's the purchase price, and back to vet, food and flea and tick protection bills for two dogs. Of course, I'll also have to find place for another dog bed (and my husband is already mécontent about the new one for Rapide... ahem).

And, am I ready to leave the dumps, the dreariness of no Baccarat to be cheered by a dandelion swatting little girl?

Oh, oui.
....