New Puppy Quotes

It is also then that I wish I believed in some sort of life after life, that in another universe, maybe on a small red planet where we have not legs but tails, where we paddle through the atmosphere like seals, where the air itself is sustenance, composed of trillions of molecules of protein and sugar and all one has to do is open one's mouth and inhale in order to remain alive and healthy, maybe you two are there together, floating through the climate. Or maybe he is closer still: maybe he is that gray cat that has begun to sit outside our neighbor's house, purring when I reach out my hand to it; maybe he is that new puppy I see tugging at the end of my other neighbor's leash; maybe he is that toddler I saw running through the square a few months ago, shrieking with joy, his parents huffing after him; maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer vacation, and a brand-new puppy rolled into one.

Iʹve seen you too. Ozera. Crispin, right?ʺ ʺChristian,ʺ corrected Lissa. ʺRight.ʺ .... ʺSo what brings you and Christopher here?ʺ asked Blake. He finished a glass of something amber colored and set it down beside the new drink. ʺChristian,ʺ said Christian. .... Blake gave her puppy-dog eyes. ʺBut you just got here! I was hoping we could get to know each other.ʺ It went without saying what he meant by that. ʺOh. And Kreskin too.

Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer holidays and a brand-new puppy all rolled into one.

I will be known forever as the Puppy who chased a cutpurse and caught fish garbage instead. My descendants will pretend I'm not in their bloodline. No – no one will want to make descendants with me. [from Beka Cooper's journal of her first day as a new Dog i.e. cop]

Mommy and Daddy make a lot of noise when they kiss. Mommy talks to God a lot. I talk to God sometimes too. I asked him for a puppy and a new monster truck but I was nice and didn't yell at him like Mommy does. He still hasn't gotten me the puppy though.

You choose men the same way a child picks out a new puppy; first one who crawls in your lap is yours.

When I held my new puppy in my arms, I broke down in tears. Because I had fallen in love. Not somewhat in love. Not partly in love. Not in a limited amount. I fell fully in love with a creature I had known for all of nine hours.

And then on the very last night of my twenties, when I held my new puppy in my arms, I broke down in tears. Because I had fallen in love. Not somewhat in love. Not partly in love. Not in a limited amount. I fell fully in love with a creature I had known for all of nine hours. I

Papa, do you like my new friend?" Frances Catherine asked when they were halfway across the field. "I surely do." "Can I keep her?" "For the love of...No, you can't keep her. She isn't a puppy. You can be her friend, though," he hastily added before his daughter could argue with him. "Forever, papa?" She 'd asked her father that question, but Judith answered her. "Forever," she shyly whispered. Frances Catherine reached across her father's chest to take hold of Judith's hand. "Forever," she pledged.

Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer holidays and a brand-new puppy all rolled into one.

Joy is found in the simple and ordinary things of life: the smile of a newborn baby, the kiss from a sweet new puppy, and the warm sunshine on a spring day.

To me, it was the most obvious thing that I could have been thankful for. My grandparents- who spoke no English, who had fled Vietnam on a stolen boat- had bested my classmates' new puppies and Disney World vacations and ski weekends.

It was as if the power and loneliness of the vampires' world had combined with the group oriented puppy-pile world of the shapeshifters and made something new.

Puppies are constantly inventing new ways to be bad. It's fascinating. You come into a room they've been in and see pieces of debris and try to figure out what you had that was made from wicker or what had been stuffed with fluff.

Every day we make the whole world new... Or else grow old.

A puppy feels like life and love. Their entire bodies are soft—fur, skin, the pads of their feet new and delicate. They radiate warmth in the way science can explain, but it goes further than that. The heat of affection pours out of their eyes and makes their little butts wiggle like crazy as soon as they see a person—they don’t even care who. They’re love, encapsulated.

Sometimes you’re just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer vacation, and a brand-new puppy all rolled into one.

A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They're on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority's blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options – neutrois, two spirit, bigender…any colour you like, Mr Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there's cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I'm easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I'll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome drugs.

Cozy was a fun night by a fireplace with marshmallows. Cozy was a grandmother knitting Christmas sweaters. Cozy was new puppies in a litter. Cozy was not what he had in mind to do in that tent with Tes.

America is a young dumb country and it needs all kinds of help. America is a dumb puppy with big teeth that bite and hurt. And we take care of America. We hold America to our bosom; we feed America, we make love to America. There wouldn't be an America if it wasn't for black people. So you have some dedicated black Americans who will die a million deaths to save America. And this is home for us. We don't know really about Africa. We talk it in a romantic sense, but America is it. And so, America is always going to be okay as long as black people don't totally lose their mind, cause we'll pick up the pieces and turn it into a new dance.

Google is so strange. It promises everything, but everything isn't there. You type in the words for what you need, and what you need becomes superfluous in an instant, shadowed instantaneously by the things you really need, and none of them answerable by Google....Sure, there's a certain charm to being able to look up and watch Eartha Kitt singing Old Fashioned Millionaire in 1957 at three in the morning or Hayley Mills singing a song about femininity from an old Disney film. But the charm is a kind of deception about a whole new way of feeling lonely, a semblance of plenitude but really a new level of Dante's inferno, a zombie-filled cemetery of spurious clues, beauty, pathos, pain, the faces of puppies, women and men from all over the world tied up and wanked over in site after site, a great sea of hidden shallows. More and more, the pressing human dilemma: how to walk a clean path between obscenities.

You can't play Electro-magnetic Golf according to rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.

It’s a tragic lost opportunity to delay taking a dog to class till he’s an adolescent. Puppy classes are the way of the future.

A warm, squirming lapful of golden puppy, licking and biting and unabashedly happy, made despair dissolve no matter how hard you were hanging on to it.

I have to tell you I love living in a world without clocks. The shackles are gone. I'm a puppy unleashed in a meadow of time. As I watched the sun come up this morning, I felt a new sense of kinship with it. Something primitive stirred inside me, something that remembers the rising sun by itself, before there were minutes and schedules and calendars, before there were even words like "morning.

Be alone. That’s when and where you will refresh. Be a stranger someplace for some odd amount of time. Introduce you to you. Try on new thoughts like sneakers. Walk up and back. How’s the toe feel? Recharge and welcome the new year like you’d welcome a happy puppy returning a stick. Tail wagging, tongue out. Then mix in with those who unbecame to become their best selves, too.

When you live in New York City, there’s a magical feeling you get whenever you run up the steps out of the subway, spin through a revolving door out of your office building at the end of a long day, push open a window to let in the spring scent of blossoms. There’s a split second where the city hits you, greets you, slobbers a kiss on your face like a puppy. It’s a jolt, and a shock, and then you move on. But there’s a part of you, somewhere, that marvels at it every time.

When they romanticize your wild, be wary. Too often they see you as something to be tamed. New puppy, not wolf. Something to show off. Sharp tongue on a leash. Claws clipped neatly. Feral creature whittled down to almost nothing. Too often it makes them feel powerful to grab something unbroken and hold it by the throat.

I’m tired of chasing affection. I’m worth more than that. I may be young, but I know what I want. I want someone who’s willing to give up everything for me. And I deserve someone who’s proud to be with me instead of being ashamed of their feelings.” “I’m not going to be the lost puppy chasing someone around and begging for attention. I’m going to take some time and figure out what I want to do next, but until I know my next move, I’m done being a burden.” “Sophie—” “It’s not your fault, Bruce. It’s been like this my whole life. I’m just tired of being a second choice.

She smiled thoughtfully. “I think Jackson was like a lost puppy. He needed purpose, someone to believe in him and love him despite his bullshit. But he didn’t have that, so he just went around humping everyone’s leg and peeing everywhere. Then you came along and he thought he found that owner that would give him that purpose—something that would make him feel needed—but you chose the fancy pet store puppy instead, so he went back to peeing on everything and destroying all the furniture.” “Um, Whit...is there a point to this?” “We all need someone to believe in us. It helps us see our full potential. You were that someone to believe in him. I think he’ll be a new man because of it.” “So you’re saying I rescued a lost puppy, and now he’ll become a topnotch show dog because I’m just so amazing?” “Exactly.” “You have such an eloquent way with words.” “No shit, right?” “Precisely.” -Emma and Whitney

Modernist literature with all its vast apparatus was an instrument, a form of perception, and once absorbed, the insights it brought could be rejected without its essence being lost, even the form endured, and it could be applied to your own life, your own fascinations, which could then suddenly appear in a new and significant light. Espen took that path, and I followed him like a brainless puppy, it was true, but I did follow him. I leafed through Adorno, read some passages of Benjamin, sat bowed over Blanchot for a few days, had a look at Derrida and Foucault, had a go at Kristeva, Lacan, Deleuze, while poems by Ekelöf, Björling, Pound, Mallarmé, Rilke, Trakl, Ashbery, Mandelstam, Lunden, Thomsen, and Hauge floated around, on which I spent more than a few minutes, I read them as prose, like a book by MacLean or Bagley, and learned nothing, understood nothing, but just having contact with them, having their books in the bookcase, led to a shifting of consciousness, just knowing they existed was an enrichment, and if they didn't furnish me with insights I became all the richer for intuitions and feelings.

It’s too late Savannah, you already let Carlos grow into a full-grown dog. You should have trained his ass when he was a puppy, when the pussy was still new to him. Now, now he’s gonna continue to shit in the house no matter how many times you rub his nose into it.

So what is the fallout for dogs of the Lassie myth? As soon as you bestow intelligence and morality, you bestow the responsibility that goes along with them. In other words, if the dog knows it’s wrong to destroy furniture yet deliberately and maliciously does it, remembers the wrong he did and feels guilt, it feels like he merits a punishment2, doesn’t it? That’s just what dogs have been getting - a lot of punishment. We set them up for all kinds of punishment by overestimating their ability to think. Interestingly, it’s the “cold” behaviorist model that ends up giving dogs a much better crack at meeting the demands we make of them. The myth gives problems to dogs they cannot solve and then punishes them for failing. And the saddest thing is that the main association most dogs have with that punishment is the presence of their owner. This puts a pretty twisted spin on loooving dogs ‘cause they’re so smart, doesn’t it?

Some of the subjects of Puppies and Babies may not identify as queer, but it doesn’t matter: the installation queers them. By which I mean to say that it partakes in a long history of queers constructing their own families—be they composed of peers or mentors or lovers or ex-lovers or children or non-human animals—and that it presents queer family making as an umbrella category under which baby making might be a subset, rather than the other way around. It reminds us that any bodily experience can be made new and strange, that nothing we do in this life need have a lid crammed on it, that no one set of practices or relations has the monopoly on the so-called radical, or the so-called normative.

Learning the value of silence is learning to listen to, instead of screaming at, reality: opening your mind enough to find what the end of someone else’s sentence sounds like, or listening to a dog until you discover what is needed instead of imposing yourself in the name of training.

The End of World War One Out of the scraped surface of the land men began to emerge, like puppies from the slit of their dam. Up from the trenches they came out upon the pitted, raw earth wobbling as if new-born. They could not believe they would be allowed to live, the orders had come down: no more killing. They approached the enemy, holding out chocolate and cigarettes. They shook hands, exchanged souvenirs--mess-kits, neckerchiefs. Some even embraced, while in London total strangers copulated in doorways and on the pavement, in the ecstasy of being reprieved. Nine months later, like men emerging from the trenches, first the head, then the body, there were lifted, newborn, from these mothers, the soldiers of World War Two.

Every year after Jeannie has her annual baby, I receive congratulations from friends and family. There’s always one person who says, “Oh, you just had a baby. Yeah, we just got a puppy.” What? In no other situation could you compare a human to an animal and people would actually be okay with it. You could never say, “Oh, you just got married? Yeah, I used to have a pig. Does your new wife like to roll around in mud, too? My pig loved that.

the prefrontal cortex has a novelty bias, meaning that its attention can be easily hijacked by something new—the proverbial shiny objects we use to entice infants, puppies, and kittens.

When a puppy reaches maturity is becomes a dog; when ice melts it is called water; when twelve months have been used up, we get a new calendar with the proper chronological name; when "magic" becomes scientific fact we refer to it as medicine, astronomy, etc. When one name is no longer appropriate for a given thing it is only logical to change it to a new on which better fits the subject. Why, then, do we not follow suit in the area of religion? Why continue to call a religion the same name when the tenets of that religions no longer fit the original one? Or, if the religion does preach the same things that it always has, but its followers practice nearly none of its teachings, why do they continue to call themselves by the name given to followers of that religion?

Worse yet, adolescents will be sensitive to hurt puppies, to starving children in distant countries, to a friend with a problem. But not to us, their parents. They do take us totally for granted.

Happiness arrives in smells and sights and sounds. It hides in new car leather, a puppy's fur, rain on a tin roof, or a sunrise. It floats there waiting for someone to notice, eager to trigger a lingering smile.

A puppy feels like life and love. Their entire bodies are soft—fur, skin, the pads of their feet new and delicate. They radiate warmth in the way science can explain, but it goes further than that. The heat of affection pours out of their eyes and makes their little butts wiggle like crazy as soon as they see a person—they don’t even care who. They’re love, encapsulated. And someone touched that, put it in a bag, and killed it.

Each new kitten and puppy, with a fresh and fragile look on life, inspired joy and awe, and though the death of the innocent was often hard to accept, it only seemed to give the times of joy a more three-dimensional aspect.

Then, in Annie’s new grasp, Cleo’s womanly frame shrank down. Her coat tightened and became her fur. Her legs pulled in. Her ears and snout elongated. She was revealed as the puppy she used to be on earth, and she panted as Annie held her up and said, “There you are. Cleo. Cleee-o!

answer. It is also then that I wish I believed in some sort of life after life, that in another universe, maybe on a small red planet where we have not legs but tails, where we paddle through the atmosphere like seals, where the air itself is sustenance, composed of trillions of molecules of protein and sugar and all one has to do is open one’s mouth and inhale in order to remain alive and healthy, maybe you two are there together, floating through the climate. Or maybe he is closer still: maybe he is that gray cat that has begun to sit outside our neighbor’s house, purring when I reach out my hand to it; maybe he is that new puppy I see tugging at the end of my other neighbor’s leash; maybe he is that toddler I saw running through the square a few months ago, shrieking with joy, his parents huffing after him; maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn’t only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

New York November 10, 1958 Dear Thom: We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers. First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you. Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had. You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply—of course it isn’t puppy love. But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it—and that I can tell you. Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it. The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it. If you love someone—there is no possible harm in saying so—only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration. Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also. It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good. Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it. We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can. And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away. Love, Fa

The Marquis believed himself to be hardened against flattery. He thought that he had experienced every variety, but he discovered that he was mistaken: the blatantly worshipful look in the eyes of a twelve-year-old, anxiously raised to his, was new to him, and it pierced his defences. He was capable of giving the coolest of set-downs to any gushing female; and the advances of toadeaters he met with the most blistering of snubs; but even as he realised how intolerably bored he would be in Soho he found himself quite unable to snub his latest and most youthful admirer. It would be like kicking a confiding puppy.

The lady is ninety-two years old, petite, well poised, and proud. She is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coiffed and her makeup perfectly applied, in spite of the fact that she is legally blind. Today she has moved to a nursing home. Her husband of seventy years recently passed away, making this move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiles sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvers her walker to the elevator, the staff person provides a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet curtains that have been hung on her window. “I love it,” she states with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy. “Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room… just wait,” the staff person says. Then Mrs. Jones speaks these words: “That does not have anything to do with it,” she gently replies. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like the room or not does not depend on how the furniture is arranged. It is how I arrange my mind that matters. I have already decided to love it. It is a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice. I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or I can get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do work. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I will focus on the new day and all of the happy memories I have stored away… just for this time in my life.

He ran his knuckles over her cheek as their gazes met and held. So much. He had been given so much. The sound of their daughters’ high-pitched laughter drew their gazes away from each other nd toward their children. The girls came running toward them, breathless and excited. Their hair was messed in tousled disarray, their gowns were smeared with dirt, their skin was flushed and rosy. They leaped onto the blanket, tumbling over each other like exuberant puppies as they wrapped their chubby arms about his neck. “Papa, Papa, we want a new game!” Morgan thought for a moment, overcome with a profound sense of gratitude. Of all he had been given, perhaps the most significant gift was a deep reverence for life, with all its pain and all its glory. Every loss had meaning. And every day was a new reason for celebration.

It wants in and it’s not going to stop until it gets in.” Vig walked over to Jace. She was still sitting by that tree, holding on to Kera’s foster puppy. Vig had the feeling Kera would not be getting that puppy back . . . ever. But she would be helping to take care of it. Vig crouched by Jace, smiled at her. “What’s trying to get in, Jace?” “An ancient power. A very old god that is very pissed off. And if we don’t work together, and stop it . . . it’ll lay waste to everything.” The silence that followed Jace’s proclamation was brutal, but then she suddenly jumped up, startling them. “Okay. ’Night, guys!” She waved and walked off with her new dog. “She never speaks,” Rolf said, “but when she does, she’s absolutely horrifying.” “What do you dudes expect?” Stieg asked around a yawn, heading back to the main house. “She’s a Crow.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books,” Neil Postman wrote: What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.

He should rest his mind and body as much as possible to ensure a complete recovery." She wrinkled her nose playfully at Bazzle, who was curled up on the other side of the bed with a ball of red fluff cuddled against his chest. "That means we mustn't let the puppy disturb Mr. Severin's sleep." The puppy had been a gift from Winterborne and Helen, delivered just that morning. They had received word of a new litter from a friend who bred toy poodle dogs, and at their request had sent the pick of the litter when he was ready to be weaned. Bazzle was enchanted with the little creature, whose presence had already helped him to stop fretting over the fright he'd received. "There's a dust wad on the bed," had been Tom's comment upon first seeing the puppy. "It has legs." Now the toy poodle stretched and yawned, and toddled up along Tom's side, staring at him with bright amber eyes.

Take tail docking…in which the last several inches of a puppy’s tail are removed, usually without anesthesia, sometimes with extremely crude instruments such as scissors or razors. The American Kennel Club (AKC), which develops guidelines used to judge canines in competition, prefers boxers, rottweilers, cocker spaniels, and dogs belonging to dozens of other breeds to have docked tails. In other words, an ideal specimen is one that’s been surgically reshaped by humans.

We would also like to point out that “Monkey Man” was the westernised version of the name, a clever, polite, convenient media translation of the kind applied once to the words of a famous Indian leader when he described Muslims as “kutte ke bachche” and found it rendered as the Hallmark-sanitised “puppies”. If one were to reverse the translation, and go from English to Hindi, New Delhi Monkey Man would, in the exquisitely racist, casteist and classist way of Indians, become Black Monkey or Kala Bandar.

Rayna does not get sick on planes. Also, Rayna does not stop talking on planes. By the time we land at Okaloosa Regional Airport, I’m wondering if I’ve spoken as many words in my entire life as she did on the plane. With no layovers, it was the longest forty-five minutes of my whole freaking existence. I can tell Rachel’s nerves are also fringed. She orders an SUV limo-Rachel never does anything small-to pick us up and insists that Rayna try the complimentary champagne. I’m fairly certain it’s the first alcoholic beverage Rayna’s ever had, and by the time we reach the hotel on the beach, I’m all the way certain. As Rayna snores in the seat across from me, Rachel checks us into the hotel and has our bags taken to our room. “Do you want to head over to the Gulfarium now?” she asks. “Or, uh, rest up a bit and wait for Rayna to wake up?” This is an important decision. Personally, I’m not tired at all and would love to see a liquored-up Rayna negotiate the stairs at the Gulfarium. But I’d feel a certain guilt if she hit her hard head on a wooden rail or something and then we’d have to pay the Gulfarium for the damages her thick skull would surely cause. Plus, I’d have to suffer a reproving look from Dr. Milligan, which might actually hurt my feelings because he reminds me a bit of my dad. So I decide to do the right thing. “Let’s rest for a while and let her snap out of it. I’ll call Dr. Milligan and let him know we’ve checked in.” Two hours later, Sleeping Beast wakes up and we head to see Dr. Milligan. Rayna is particularly grouchy when hungover-can you even get hungover from drinking champagne?-so she’s not terribly inclined to be nice to the security guard who lets us in. She mutters something under her breath-thank God she doesn’t have a real voice-and pushes past him like the spoiled Royalty she is. I’m just about aggravated beyond redemption-until we see Dr. Milligan in a new exhibit of stingrays. He coos and murmurs as if they’re a litter of puppies in the tank begging to play with him. When he notices our arrival he smiles, and it feels like a coconut slushy on a sweltering day and it almost makes up for the crap I’ve been put through these past few days.

puppy. What strength of character, what a friend! Then he rushed to the door and barked as though I were being invaded. And if it hadn’t been for all that plastic he might have succeeded. I remember an old Arab in North Africa, a man whose hands had never felt water. He gave me mint tea in a glass so coated with use that it was opaque, but he handed me companionship, and the tea was wonderful because of it. And without any protection my teeth didn’t fall out, nor did running sores develop. I began to formulate a new law describing the relationship of protection to despondency. A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.

Dogs (like rats) are multitalented but they are also not very smart the way humans are. A recent book, devoted to the intelligence of dogs, is 250+ pages long (Stanley Coren, The Intelligence of Dogs: A Guide to the Thoughts, Emotions, and Inner Lives of Our Canine Companions, 1994). Interestingly, despite careful qualifications by Coren regarding definitions, the ranking of breeds by intelligence literally made newspaper headlines. We are obviously fascinated by the notion that dogs - or at least certain breeds of dog - might, just might, be really, really smart. It all makes as much sense as evaluating humans on our ability to sniff for bombs or echo-locate.

When Myron opened the conference room door, Ned Tunwell charged like a happy puppy. He smiled brightly, shook hands, slapped Myron on the back. Myron half-expected him to jump in his lap and lick his face. Ned Tunwell looked to be in his early thirties, around Myron’s age. His entire persona was always upbeat, like a Hare Krishna on speed—or worse, a Family Feud contestant. He wore a blue blazer, white shirt, khaki pants, loud tie, and of course, Nike tennis shoes. The new Duane Richwood line. His hair was yellow-blond and he had one of those milk-stain mustaches. Ned finally calmed down enough to hold up a videotape. “Wait till you see this!” he raved. “Myron, you are going to love it. It’s fantastic.

I left Brookstone and went to the Pottery Barn. When I was a kid and everything inside our house was familiar, cheap, and ruined, walking into the Pottery Barn was like entering heaven. If they really wanted people to enjoy church, I thought back then, they should make everything in church look and smell like the Pottery Barn. My dream was to surround myself one day with everything in the store, with the wicker baskets and scented candles, the brushed-silver picture frames. But that was a long time ago. I had already gone through a period of buying everything there was to buy at the Pottery Barn and decorating my apartment like a Pottery Barn outlet, and then getting rid of it all during a massive upgrade. Now everything at the Pottery Barn looked ersatz and mass-produced. To buy any of it now would be to regress in aspiration and selfhood. I didn’t want to buy anything at the Pottery Barn so much as I wanted to recapture the feeling of wanting to buy everything from the Pottery Barn. Something similar happened at the music store. I should try to find some new music, I thought, because there was a time when new music could lift me out of a funk like nothing else. But I wasn’t past the Bs when I saw the only thing I really cared to buy. It was the Beatles’ Rubber Soul, which had been released in 1965. I already owned Rubber Soul. I had owned Rubber Soul on vinyl, then on cassette, and now on CD, and of course on my iPod, iPod mini, and iPhone. If I wanted to, I could have pulled out my iPhone and played Rubber Soul from start to finish right there, on speaker, for the sake of the whole store. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to buy Rubber Soul for the first time all over again. I wanted to return the needle from the run-out groove to the opening chords of “Drive My Car” and make everything new again. That wasn’t going to happen. But, I thought, I could buy it for somebody else. I could buy somebody else the new experience of listening to Rubber Soul for the first time. So I took the CD up to the register and paid for it and, walking out, felt renewed and excited. But the first kid I offered it to, a rotund teenager in a wheelchair looking longingly into a GameStop window, declined on the principle that he would rather have cash. A couple of other kids didn’t have CD players. I ended up leaving Rubber Soul on a bench beside a decommissioned ashtray where someone had discarded an unhealthy gob of human hair. I wandered, as everyone in the mall sooner or later does, into the Best Friends Pet Store. Many best friends—impossibly small beagles and corgis and German shepherds—were locked away for display in white cages where they spent their days dozing with depression, stirring only long enough to ponder the psychic hurdles of licking their paws. Could there be anything better to lift your spirits than a new puppy?

My family’s tradition of ‘matching-matching’ names is so obsessive, it’s against the order of nature. When my uncles Anil and Anant married, they took advantage of a heinous custom in Marathi weddings. After the pheras, a dish of uncooked rice is placed before the newlyweds, and whatever name the husband chooses to write in the rice becomes the new name of his wife. Because marriage in our culture is akin to buying a puppy at a pet shop and saying, ‘I am your new owner, and I shall call you Flu y.’ So Anil Adarkar brought home Asha Adarkar (née Kiran), and Anant Adarkar brought home Anita Adarkar (née Geeta). And to complete this picture of divine perfection they named their children Aniket, and Ashwini and Ashleysha, respectively.

Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn't keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn't playing the game the way it was supposed to be played. There's hiding and there's finding, we'd say. And he'd say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we'd all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn't play with him anymore if he didn't get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He's probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know. As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, "GET FOUND, KID!" out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It's real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes. A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say good-bye. He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. "I don't want anyone to know." "What will people think?" "I don't want to bother anyone." Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found. Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines - by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end. "Olly-olly-oxen-free." The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says "Come on in, wherever you are. It's a new game." And so say I. To all those who have hid too good. Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.

Sample House-training Schedule for a Young Puppy 6:30 a.m. Rise. Walk pup briefly. 7:00 a.m. Feed pup and offer a drink of water. Walk puppy. Return home and play briefly with pup. Pup stays in crate. Midmorning Walk pup. After walk, pup stays with owner fifteen minutes. Pup returns to crate. Noon–1:00 p.m Feed pup second meal and offer water. Walk puppy. Return home and play with pup. Pup returns to crate. Midafternoon Offer pup water. Walk puppy. Pup returns to crate. 5:00 p.m. Feed pup third meal and offer water. Walk puppy. Allow pup to play in kitchen while dinner is being prepared. 7:00 p.m. Walk pup briefly. Return home and play with puppy. Pup returns to create Before bed Walk pup. Puppy sleeps in crate or on a tether (preferably with metal chain) in your bedroom.

Necessities 1 A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas, but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in. With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up. The green smear of the woods we first made love in. The yellow city we thought was our future. The red highways not traveled, the green ones with their missed exits, the black side roads which took us where we had not meant to go. The high peaks, recorded by relatives, though we prefer certain unmarked elevations, the private alps no one knows we have climbed. The careful boundaries we draw and erase. And always, around the edges, the opaque wash of blue, concealing the drop-off they have stepped into before us, singly, mapless, not looking back. 2 The illusion of progress. Imagine our lives without it: tape measures rolled back, yardsticks chopped off. Wheels turning but going nowhere. Paintings flat, with no vanishing point. The plots of all novels circular; page numbers reversing themselves past the middle. The mountaintop no longer a goal, merely the point between ascent and descent. All streets looping back on themselves; life as a beckoning road an absurd idea. Our children refusing to grow out of their childhoods; the years refusing to drag themselves toward the new century. And hope, the puppy that bounds ahead, no longer a household animal. 3 Answers to questions, an endless supply. New ones that startle, old ones that reassure us. All of them wrong perhaps, but for the moment solutions, like kisses or surgery. Rising inflections countered by level voices, words beginning with w hushed by declarative sentences. The small, bold sphere of the period chasing after the hook, the doubter that walks on water and treads air and refuses to go away. 4 Evidence that we matter. The crash of the plane which, at the last moment, we did not take. The involuntary turn of the head, which caused the bullet to miss us. The obscene caller who wakes us at midnight to the smell of gas. The moon's full blessing when we fell in love, its black mood when it was all over. Confirm us, we say to the world, with your weather, your gifts, your warnings, your ringing telephones, your long, bleak silences. 5 Even now, the old things first things, which taught us language. Things of day and of night. Irrational lightning, fickle clouds, the incorruptible moon. Fire as revolution, grass as the heir to all revolutions. Snow as the alphabet of the dead, subtle, undeciphered. The river as what we wish it to be. Trees in their humanness, animals in their otherness. Summits. Chasms. Clearings. And stars, which gave us the word distance, so we could name our deepest sadness.

The humiliation and the sleepless nights. When I couldn’t breathe, because he didn’t reply. How I cried when I typed. I wrote to him when my puppy died, about the bully and the stalker. It was like a storm that took away January, February, and March. And when months were gone, I was all alone, trying to fix new and old scars. I was trying so hard to hide the stains, but they just got blue and dark. The letters I wrote and the messages I sent. I’m glad his reply never came. I wish he loses me without even having me. I wish he loses all of me, the clingy me, the needy me, the broken me, and also the happy me…and I suppose when he’ll lose all of me, I’ll forget him too. There’s one thing that is sadder than losing someone you’ve been waiting for all your life…it’s losing them, and not even realizing you had them. I wish, Siddhartha never reads the book and the songs and the letters…he doesn’t deserve them.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that Connectors are the only people who matter in a social epidemic. Roger Horchow sent out a dozen faxes promoting his daughter's friend's new restaurant. But he didn't discover that restaurant. Someone else did and told him about it. At some point in the rise of Hush Puppies, the shoes were discovered by Connectors, who broadcast the return of Hush Puppies far and wide. but who told the Connectors about Hush Puppies? It's possible that Connectors learn about new information by an entirely random process, that because they know so many people they get access to new things wherever they pop up. If you look closely at social epidemics, however, it becomes clear that just as there are people we rely upon to connect us to other people, there are also people we rely upon to connect us with new information. There are people specialists, and there are information specialists.

What is fascinating is that it’s at this juncture, after the end of the last ice age, that wars first break out. Just as we started settling down in one place, archaeological research has determined, we built the first military fortifications. This is also when the first cave paintings appeared that depict archers going at each other, and legions of skeletons from around this time have been found to bear clear traces of violent injury.25 How did it come to this? Scholars think there were at least two causes. One, we now had belongings to fight over, starting with land. And two, settled life made us more distrustful of strangers. Foraging nomads had a fairly laid-back membership policy: you crossed paths with new people all the time and could easily join up with another group.26 Villagers, on the other hand, grew more focused on their own communities and their own possessions. Homo puppy went from cosmopolitan to xenophobe.

This seems to be what the nature writer Henry Beston was getting at when he wrote in The Outermost House: We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.

Grace didn’t go to the shelter at all that week. She just couldn’t bear it. She had made Harry’s life even harder by falling in love with him. He had to find a new home, and she was stopping him. She just had to let him go, the sooner the better. She supposed she could have gone back to the shelter and kept away from Harry, but that would be so difficult. Danny didn’t even try to persuade her this time. Mum had phoned the shelter to talk to Sally and explain. Grace had listened to what Mum was saying, and she could tell that Sally was sad, but that she agreed with Mum. It was the best thing for Harry. Life felt very flat without the shelter to go to, though, Grace thought, lying on her bed listening to her favourite CD. School, more school, hanging around at home. She’d gone to Maya’s for tea yesterday, which was nice, but she still missed Harry, and all the other dogs, so much. “Grace!” Mum called from the kitchen. “Time to go!” Grace sighed, and rolled off her bed. Another flat to go and see.

Therefore they spent such time as I was housekeeping, eating or sleeping, alone in the greenhouse, and I had to manage as best I could when, after these intervals, I went back to them, not to be knocked over by their joyful welcome. Gradually, however, things settled down. The secret of peace with puppies, I discovered—up to then I had had only ready-made dogs (except Bijou, who doesn’t count), and had everything to learn,—is to give them a great deal of exercise, and a great deal of food. They should be gorged; regularly. Then they will sleep for hours—quite long enough, I found, in Ingo and Ivo’s case, for me to deal justly with Mr. Anstruther, against whom I had been feeling rather a grudge. This, then, was the line I took; and presently a new rug was able safely to be put in the greenhouse, and while they lay on it, stupefied by well-being, lost to the world, a relaxed heap of paws and ears and tails, with two tightly-filled bellies to point the moral, I got on, once again, with Fräulein Schmidt.

I landed on my side, my hip taking the brunt of the fall. It burned and stung from the hit, but I ignored it and struggled to sit up quickly. There really was no point in hurrying so no one would see. Everyone already saw A pair of jean-clad legs appeared before me, and my suitcase and all my other stuff was dropped nearby. "Whatcha doing down there?" Romeo drawled, his hands on his hips as he stared down at me with dancing blue eyes. "Making a snow angel," I quipped. I glanced down at my hands, which were covered with wet snow and bits of salt (to keep the pavement from getting icy). Clearly, ice wasn't required for me to fall. A small group of girls just "happened by", and by that I mean they'd been staring at Romeo with puppy dog eyes and giving me the stink eye. When I fell, they took it as an opportunity to descend like buzzards stalking the dead. Their leader was the girl who approached me the very first day I'd worn Romeo's hoodie around campus and told me he'd get bored. As they stalked closer, looking like clones from the movie Mean Girls, I caught the calculating look in her eyes. This wasn't going to be good. I pushed up off the ground so I wouldn't feel so vulnerable, but the new snow was slick and my hand slid right out from under me and I fell back again. Romeo was there immediately, the teasing light in his eyes gone as he slid his hand around my back and started to pull me up. "Careful, babe." he said gently. The girls were behind him so I knew he hadn't seen them approach. They stopped as one unit, and I braced myself for whatever their leader was about to say. She was wearing painted-on skinny jeans (I mean, really, how did she sit down and still breathe?) and some designer coat with a monogrammed scarf draped fashionably around her neck. Her boots were high-heeled, made of suede and laced up the back with contrasting ribbon. "Wow," she said, opening her perfectly painted pink lips. "I saw that from way over there. That sure looked like it hurt." She said it fairly amicably, but anyone who could see the twist to her mouth as she said it would know better. Romeo paused in lifting me to my feet. I felt his eyes on me. Then his lips thinned as he turned and looked over his shoulder. "Ladies," he said like he was greeting a group of welcomed friends. Annoyance prickled my stomach like tiny needles stabbing me. It's not that I wanted him to be rude, but did he have to sound so welcoming? "Romeo," Cruella DeBarbie (I don't know her real name, but this one fit) purred. "Haven't you grown bored of this clumsy mule yet?" Unable to stop myself, I gasped and jumped up to my feet. If she wanted to call me a mule, I'd show her just how much of an ass I could be. Romeo brought his arm out and stopped me from marching past. I collided into him, and if his fingers hadn't knowingly grabbed hold to steady me, I'd have fallen again. "Actually," Romeo said, his voice calm, "I am pretty bored." Three smirks were sent my way. What a bunch of idiots. "The view from where I'm standing sure leaves a lot to be desired." One by one, their eyes rounded when they realized the view he referenced was them. Without another word, he pivoted around and looked down at me, his gaze going soft. "No need to make snow angels, baby," he said loud enough for the slack-jawed buzzards to hear. "You already look like one standing here with all that snow in your hair." Before I could say a word, he picked me up and fastened his mouth to mine. My legs wound around his waist without thought, and I kissed him back as gentle snow fell against our faces.

A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They’re on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority’s blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options—neutrois, two spirit, bigender…any colour you like, Mr. Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there’s cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I’m easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I’ll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome dogs.

If we look honestly at the way many people manage their dogs today, we are faced with a staggering reflection of irresponsibility and lack of compassion. It is difficult to refer to a dog as “man’s best friend” when more than six million unwanted adult dogs and puppies are euthanized every year. We are not speaking here of the humane killing of animals done out of a sense of responsible stewardship but of the massive human negligence that leads to euthanasia. For those who doubt the serious implications of this situation, a trip to the local animal shelter can be a real eye-opener. We recall one client who dismissed our advice about spaying her female shepherd, explaining she felt it was important for her children to have the experience of seeing puppies born. When we asked her how she intended to care for and give homes to the puppies, she responded that she really had not thought about it at all and that she would probably leave them at the local humane society when it was time for them to be weaned. We then asked her what value such an experience would have if the principal lesson her children would learn is that puppies are cute little playthings who, when sufficiently used, may then be conveniently disposed of. Fortunately, our questioning convinced her of her faulty thinking, and she left with a new respect for the implications of bringing puppies into the world.

Beth nodded, wiping her tears away with her sleeve. She supposed she ought to be glad about that – she certainly didn’t want Harry to be here at the shelter for ages, all miserable in a little run. But she didn’t want anyone else to have him either! He was hers. She’d only had him for two months, when her dad broke the news to her that his company was sending him to America for three years. At first it had seemed so exciting, going to live in New York, but almost at once she’d thought of Harry. Would he like it there? And then Dad had said he couldn’t come. That it would be too difficult with quarantine, and they would be living in a city flat that wouldn’t be suitable for a dog. Harry had to stay behind, and since they had no one to leave him with, he had to go to the shelter – a home for unwanted dogs. Which didn’t seem fair, because Beth did want him, very much. “We’ll write to you, to let you know when Harry’s settled with a new owner,” Sally promised. “Really soon. I know he’s going to find a lovely home.” Beth wanted to shout out that he had a lovely home, but she nodded, and her dad led her out, which was good, because she was crying so much she couldn’t see. Harry whimpered, calling after her and scrabbling at the wire door. Beth was crying! There was something wrong, and she was going away from him. He howled for two hours, and then he was so exhausted he fell asleep. When he woke up, she still hadn’t come back.

I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over—I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.

there is so much injustice in the world.” “And you do not believe God can fix it. So you see people starve puppies or cut down trees, and you take over the job you think God should be doing. This is not our way. Outsiders disagree with us, but we have always believed that we belong to the kingdom of heaven, not the kingdoms of men. It’s the reason we don’t vote or fight in wars. Puppy mills and new roads are the affairs of men. We concern ourselves with the things of God. We believe in submitting our will to the will of Heavenly Father. Gelassenheit.” “And let evil men go unpunished?” Dawdi raised a finger to the sky. “‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ God allows people and animals to suffer at the hands of wicked men so that His judgments will be just at the last day. The wicked will have their reward, even as the righteous will. Do not rob anyone of the reward God has in store for them.” Aden swallowed the lump in his throat. “Dawdi, do you remember when I had that accident at the lake?” “Your mamm wrote us six pages about it.” “The car filled with water, and we couldn’t get out.” He ran a hand across his forehead and shivered. He still felt the ice in his bones. “I thought I was going to die. I’ve never told anyone this before, but someone grabbed my hand and pulled me to the surface.” “An angel?” “I heard a voice urging me to choose the good part.” Nothing seemed to surprise Dawdi. “That’s wonderful gute.” “Not really. I mean, it is wonderful gute that an angel saved my life, but I have been so confused. I feel like God is calling my number, but I can’t answer Him because I don’t have a phone.” “I’ve never needed a phone to talk to God,” Dawdi said. “But it would be much easier if I knew exactly what He wants to tell me.” “If God made it easy, we would not grow from the struggle.” “I know.

David Greene was kind, and he had a sense of humor. He made your mother laugh.” That was all Gran could muster up? “Did you not like him?” “He wasn’t a big believer in Tarot. Humor aside, he was a very practical man. From New England,” she added, as if that explained everything. “I’d been wearing Karen down about the Arcana—until she met him. Before I knew it, your mother was pregnant. Even then, I sensed you were the Empress.” “He didn’t want us to live up north?” “David planned to move there.” Her gaze went distant. “To move you—the great Empress—away from her Haven.” That must have gone over well. “In the end, I convinced them not to go.” ...... I opened up the family albums. As I scrolled through them, her eyes appeared dazed, as if she wasn’t seeing the images. Yet then she stared at a large picture of my father. I said, “I wish I could remember him.” “David used to carry you around the farm on his shoulders,” she said. “He read to you every night and took you to the river to skip stones. He drove you around to pet every baby animal born in a ten-mile radius. Lambs, kittens, puppies.” She drew a labored breath. “He brought you to the crops and the gardens. Even then, you would pet the bark of an oak and kiss a rose bloom. If the cane was sighing that day, you’d fall asleep in his arms.” I imagined it all: the sugarcane, the farm, the majestic oaks, the lazy river that always had fish jumping. My roots were there, but I knew I would never go back. Jack’s dream had been to return and rebuild Haven. A dream we’d shared. I would feel like a traitor going home without him. Plus, it’d be too painful. Everything would remind me of the love I’d lost. “David’s death was so needless,” she said. “Don’t know what he was doing near that cane crusher.” “David’s death was so needless,” she said. “Don’t know what he was doing near that cane crusher.” I snapped my gaze to her. “What do you mean? He disappeared on a fishing trip in the Basin.” She frowned at me. “He did. Of course.” Chills crept up my spine. Was she lying? Why would she, unless . . .

Pixie lay in a basket by the fire where a dozen brown and white puppies wriggled around her.  She had surprised us by getting pregnant very soon after moving back in with us, and the puppies were just under four-weeks-old now. We couldn’t have been more thrilled, and Bandit couldn’t have been a better dad.  He seemed to have endless patience as they climbed all over him, these wriggling furballs of energy.  Literally everything excited them.   Sully kneeled down beside me to pet the nearest pup, one with a big brown patch over one eye and a butt that never quit shaking.   “Have you got names for them yet?”  I pointed at the one in his hand while Bandit said.  “That’s Patch” “Because of his eye, obviously,” I filled in. Hearing the name, Patch suddenly squirmed out of his hands and bolted for Bandit, but his little paws couldn’t quite get purchase on the new floor and he skidded all the way to Bandit who he bumped into, coming to a sudden stop.  Shaking his head, he looked up at Bandit with intelligent eyes, then sat, waiting for further instructions.  Sully and I shared a look.   They were too young to know their names or much more than that, but it definitely seemed that Patch had known his name and was now waiting for Bandit to begin a game or something.  I pointed at a different puppy, one with a white shape on his rump.   “That one’s Star.” Bandit said. The minute the iPad said his name, Star’s head shot up, then he too bounded over to sit beside his brother.  Sully’s mouth fell open.  “No way…. They’re too young to behave like this.” Feeling a wave of excitement, I watched as Bandit finished calling his kids.   “Panda, Ace, Champ…” As he called their names, each puppy jumped to attention, coming to sit in a neat row in front of Bandit until all twelve of them were in a line in front of him.   I snapped a look at Bandit.  “Did you know about this? Did you know they were super smart too?”  He snorted out of his nose, laughing at our shock.  Sully and I looked at each other, the same startled expression in our eyes. “But…” was all Sully could say.  I at least managed two whole words before the full ramifications of an entire household of super smart dogs could hit me. “Oh boy.

She faced her pretend Arin. His scar was healed. His gray eyes were startlingly clear. “You’re not real,” she reminded him. “I feel real.” He brushed one finger across her lower lip. It suddenly seemed that there were no clouds in the sky, and that she sat in full sunshine. “You feel real,” he said. The puppy yawned, her jaws closing with a snap. The sound brought Kestrel to herself. She felt a little embarrassed. Her pulse was high. But she couldn’t stop pretending. Kestrel reached beneath her skirts to pull down a knee-high stocking. Arin made a sound. “I want to feel the grass beneath my feet,” Kestrel told him. “Someone’s going to see you.” “I don’t care.” “But that someone is me, and you should have a care, Kestrel, for my poor heart.” He reached under the hem of her dress to catch her hand in the act of pulling down the second stocking. “You’re treating me quite badly,” he said, and slid the stocking free, his palm skimming along the path of her calf. He looked at her. His hand wrapped around her bare ankle. Kestrel became shy…though she had known full well what she was doing. Arin grinned. With his free hand, he plucked a blade of grass. He tickled it against the sole of her foot. She laughed, jerking away. He let her go. He settled down beside her, lying on his stomach on the grass, propped up by his elbow. Kestrel lay on her back. She heard birdsong: high and long, with a trill at the end. She gazed up at the sky. It was blue enough for summer. “Perfect,” she said. “Almost.” She turned to look at him, and he was already looking at her. “I’m going to miss you when I wake up,” she whispered, because she realized that she must have fallen asleep under the sun. Arin was too real for her imagination. He was a dream. “Don’t wake up,” he said. The air smelled like new leaves. “You said you trusted me.” “I did.” He added, “I do.” “You are a dream.” He smiled. “I lied to you,” Kestrel said. “I kept secrets. I thought it was for the best. But it was because I didn’t trust you.” Arin shifted onto his side. He caressed her cheek lightly with the back of his hand. That trailing sensation felt like the last note of the bird’s song. “No,” he agreed, his voice gentle. “You didn’t.” Kestrel woke. The puppy was draped across her feet, sleeping. Her stockings lay in a small heap beside her. The sun had climbed in the sky. Her cheek was flushed, the skin tight: a little sunburned. The puppy twitched, still lost in sleep. Kestrel envied her. She rested her head again on the grass. She closed her eyes, and tried to find her way back into her dream.

The morning was already setting up to be hectic, and Jon thanked his lucky stars that Jessie was so good at his job and a constant spark-plug of activity. Oh god, you did not just think Jessie was a spark-plug? You really are getting old. Next thing you know you’ll being saying whipper-snappers and break a hip getting out of bed. He shook his head. I guess I had a good run. Jessie quickly re-entered the office. “Alright. Elisabeth has her caffeine fix and said she’ll be down to say goodbye in a few. So let’s get this bad boy going for the week. Travel plans are done for next month and meetings for the week are in you planner so I’m assuming they’ll be no more complaining about flying coach class this time?” Jessie gave a sly wink and kept organizing his desk. “Yes. And for that I thank you for that my color-coding, hyper computer organized planner. We have to make sure the next presentation for Chicago is ready in three weeks; the storyboards for the new campaign ideas have to be finished by Tuesday the 16th so we can get them shipped before I head out there.” “And let’s not forget our important morning ritual.” Jon looked at Jessie with a question about to form before the realization hit him. His expression changed from confused to stern. “No cat videos Jessie. I swear. Enough of the cat videos.” “C’mon. You know you love them and they brighten your dour moods. Look at this one.” Jessie turned his screen and Jon begrudgingly looked at the cute little puppy and kitten with captions over them. “How can you not love this?” Jessie smiled. “The cute little kitty tells the playful puppy not to do it and yet the puppy bonks the little kitty on the head with his little puppy paw. “Boop Boop.” And then the cat swipes at the puppy and it falls off the bed. You know this is internet gold.” Jon smiled. “Can we get back to work?” Jessie nodded and then walked up to Jon - without hesitating, he bonked him lightly on the head. “Boop.” He paused and added, “I think this puppy is onto something.” Jessie grinned ear to ear still. “I pledge, from now on if something makes me as happy as this bonking picture I’m just going to say Boop boop.” Jon stood stone-faced but a second later, could not stop his smile. “I am not amused.” Jon shook the smile away. “Now, if you’re done boop booping me, there is something else I want to talk with you about.” Jessie looked at Jon with a quizzical smile. “Not to blow my own horn but I have a new and brilliant thought my young apprentice.” Jessie opened his mouth to comment on the blowing horn, but Jon held up his hand and cut him off. “Stop it.” Jessie closed his mouth and swallowed the sexual innuendo-laced comment he had forming on the tip of his tongue.

It was a glorious evening, the sun seeming to hesitate in the process of setting, as if it couldn't bear to end the day. It was teetering on the horizon, throwing ribbons of pink and mauve across the sky like life ropes, and the air was sweet with jasmine. They'd brought the white cane chairs down from the house, and Anthony, having spent the afternoon entertaining the girls, had finally opened the newspaper he'd brought with him, only to fall into a doze behind it. Edwina, the new puppy, was leaping about at Eleanor's feet, pouncing on a ball the girls had found for her, and Eleanor was rolling it gently along the cooling lawn, laughing fondly as the puppy tripped over her ears to fetch it back. She was teasing the little dog, lifting the ball just out of reach for the pleasure of seeing her balance on her hind legs, cycle her little paws in the air, and then snap at it with her teeth. They were sharp teeth. The puppy had already managed to tear holes in most of Eleanor's stockings. Darling little menace, she had a sixth sense for rooting out the things she shouldn't have, but it was impossible to be cross with her. She only had to look up with those big brown eyes and cock her head just so and Eleanor melted. She'd wanted a dog when she was a girl, but her mother had declared them "filthy beasts" and that was that.

Boys? Megan’s mind was flooded with images of boys. Boys with missing teeth, their faces smeared with red Popsicle goo, their beady little eyes laughing at her as they lured her behind their house to see their new “puppy” and then lassoed her to a tree and hung her upside down. Greasy-haired, chubby-legged, evil little boys. Boys with worms in their pockets who ate gum off the ground and pulled her hair.

If anything's to be praised, it's most likely how the west wind becomes the east wind, when a frozen bough sways leftward, voicing its creaking protests, and your cough flies across the Great Plains to Dakota's forests. At noon, shouldering a shotgun, fire at what may well be a rabbit in snowfields, so that a shell widens the breach between the pen that puts up these limping awkward lines and the creature leaving real tracks in the white. On occasion the head combines its existence with that of a hand, not to fetch more lines but to cup an ear under the pouring slur of their common voice. Like a new centaur. There is always a possibility left to let yourself out to the street whose brown length will soothe the eye with doorways, the slender forking of willows, the patchwork puddles, with simply walking. The hair on my gourd is stirred by a breeze and the street, in distance, tapering to a V, is like a face to a chin; and a barking puppy flies out of a gateway like crumpled paper. A street. Some houses, let's say, are better than others. To take one item, some have richer windows. What's more, if you go insane, it won't happen, at least, inside them. ... and when 'the future' is uttered, swarms of mice rush out of the Russian language and gnaw a piece of ripened memory which is twice as hole-ridden as real cheese. After all these years it hardly matters who or what stands in the corner, hidden by heavy drapes, and your mind resounds not with a seraphic 'do', only their rustle. Life, that no one dares to appraise, like that gift horse's mouth, bares its teeth in a grin at each encounter. What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech. Not that I am losing my grip; I am just tired of summer. You reach for a shirt in a drawer and the day is wasted. If only winter were here for snow to smother all these streets, these humans; but first, the blasted green. I would sleep in my clothes or just pluck a borrowed book, while what's left of the year's slack rhythm, like a dog abandoning its blind owner, crosses the road at the usual zebra. Freedom is when you forget the spelling of the tyrant's name and your mouth's saliva is sweeter than Persian pie, and though your brain is wrung tight as the horn of a ram nothing drops from your pale-blue eye.

Once you have found your Pug puppy and we have answered all of your questions; click on the BUY NOW button found on each puppy profile page. You will have the option of paying the whole amount for the puppy of your choice or the deposit amount of $350.00 Then, we can take your next companion out of the market so that nobody else can inquire about your new baby. You will also have the option of paying for air shipping and Microchip ID, which are optional to you.

A burst of energy zipped through me and pushed me to my feet. I was at the door and waiting when Mia pushed it open. She looked mildly surprised to see her kitchen full of people. She dropped her bag by the door. “Hi. What did I miss?” Hudson got up and started toward her. Mitch straightened up from his spot behind Maddy. “Lola has puppies, Neville still has testicles, you have a new neighbour, and we may have part of a treasure map to stolen treasure.” Her eyebrows went up and her mouth dropped open. Hudson held open his arms. “Welcome home!

The boys will take a little while to adjust, but I’m sure you’ll all get along,” her mother said. Boys? Megan’s mind was flooded with images of boys. Boys with missing teeth, their faces smeared with red Popsicle goo, their beady little eyes laughing at her as they lured her behind their house to see their new “puppy” and then lassoed her to a tree and hung her upside down. Greasy-haired, chubby-legged, evil little boys. Boys with worms in their pockets who ate gum off the ground and pulled her hair. “How many of them were there again?” Megan asked as she lowered herself shakily onto the edge of the couch. Her mother and father pondered this. “Seven at last count, I believe,” her father said. “Quite a brood.” Yes. Quite, Megan thought.

Maybe he got me one of those two-necklace sets, the ones with the halved hearts, I thought, and he’ll wear one half and I’ll wear the other. I couldn’t exactly picture it, but Marlboro Man had never been above surprising me. Then again, we were walking toward a barn. Maybe it was a piece of furniture for the house we’d been working on--a love seat, perhaps. Oh, wouldn’t that be the most darling of wedding gifts? A love seat? I’ll bet it’s upholstered in cowhide, I thought, or maybe some old western brocade fabric. I’d always loved those fabrics in the old John Wayne movies. Maybe its legs are made of horns! It just had to be furniture. Maybe it was a new bed. A bed on which all the magic of the world would take place, where our children--whether one or six--would be conceived, where the prairie would ignite in an explosion of passion and lust, where… Or maybe it’s a puppy. Oh, yes! That has to be it, I told myself. It’s probably a puppy--a pug, even, in tribute to the first time I broke down and cried in front of him! Oh my gosh--he’s replacing Puggy Sue, I thought. He waited until we were close enough to the wedding, but he doesn’t want the pup to get any bigger before he gives it to me. Oh, Marlboro Man…you may have just zeroed in on what could possibly be the single most romantic thing you ever could have done for me. In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect love gift. A pug would be the perfect bridge between my old world and my new, a permanent and furry reminder of my old life on the golf course. As Marlboro Man slid open the huge barn doors and flipped on the enormous lights mounted to the beams, my heart began beating quickly. I couldn’t wait to smell its puppy breath.

I closed my eyes, laid my head back on the pillow, and savored my first moments alone with my child. Seconds later, the door to my room opened and my brother-in-law, Tim, walked in. He’d just finished working a huge load of cattle. Marlboro Man would have been, too, if I hadn’t gone into labor the night before. “Hey!” Tim said enthusiastically. “How’s it going?” I yanked the bedsheet far enough north to cover the baby’s head and my exposed breast; as much as I loved my new brother-in-law, I just couldn’t see myself being that open with him. He caught on immediately. “Oops--did I come at a bad time?” Tim asked, a deer caught in the headlights. “You just missed your brother,” I said. The baby’s lips fell off my nipple and she rooted around and tried to find it again. I tried to act like nothing was happening under the covers. “No kidding?” Tim asked, looking nervously around the room. “Oh, I should have called first.” “Come on in,” I said, sitting up in the bed as tall as I could. The epidural had definitely worn off. My bottom was beginning to throb. “How’s the baby?” he asked, wanting to look but unsure if he should look in her direction. “She’s great,” I answered, pulling the little one out from under the covers. I prayed I could get my nipple quickly tucked away without incident. Tim smiled as he regarded his new niece. “She’s so cute,” he said tenderly. “Can I hold her?” He reached out his arms like a child wanting to hold a puppy. “Sure,” I said, handing her over, my bottom stinging by now. All I could think about was getting in the shower and spraying it with the nozzle I’d noticed earlier in the day when the nurse escorted me to the bathroom. I’d started obsessing over it, in fact. The nozzle was all I could think about. Tim seemed as surprised at the baby’s gender as his brother had been. “I was shocked when I heard!” he said, looking at me with a smile. I laughed, imagining what Marlboro Man’s dad might be thinking. That the first grandchild in such a male-dominated ranching family turned out to be a girl was becoming more humorous to me each minute. This was going to be an adventure.

Hmm.” The man put his arms behind his back and cocked his head like a spaniel puppy trying to identify a new noise. “No feelings for your family? Maybe not your parents—that bitch of a mother of yours, that traitorous father—no. I can see you having a bit too much integrity to care for them.” He bit out the word integrity, making it sound sordid and misplaced. Taylor shifted uncomfortably.

But maybe rural America isn't dying so much as it's Shucker-ing: adjusting, adapting, becoming something new, getting a new outdoor sign and adding jalapeno hush puppies to the menu. I'd like to think that.

Avoidance

Car salesman turned governor. How it fried Dick Artemus to hear himself described like that--the snotty implication being that all car salesman were cagey and duplicitous, unworthy of holding public office. At first Dick Artemus had fought back, pridefully pointing out that his dealership sold only Toyotas, the most popular and reliable automobile on the face of the planet! A quality vehicle, he'd said. Top rated by all the important consumer magazines! But the governor's media advisers told him he sounded not only petty, but self-promotional, and that folks who loved their new Camry did not necessarily love the guy who'd sold it to them. The media advisers told Dick Artemus that the best thing he could do for his future political career was to make voters forget he'd ever been a car salesman (not that the Democrats would ever let them forget). Take the high road, the media advisers told him. Act gubernatorial.

The pet store salesperson assures you that you can take the puppy home with you and if you don’t like it, just bring it back—no questions asked.

They want to be appreciated, and they want a real partner, not a puppy. Have fun. Dare them. Challenge them. Savor each layer, each new thing you learn about her.

Finally, keep in mind that behaviour is always changing; therefore it can always be changed. Never give up on your dog and your training. If you don’t like something you have trained, either inadvertently or on purpose, then re-teach it, re-name it, and reward the new behaviour a lot.

Once the dog is happily offering the new behaviour, bit by bit start to raise your criteria for speed. Click only the fast pounce down or the quicker look back at you when you stop moving or the faster sit or the more forceful nose touch. The dog needs to learn to discriminate between the mediocre behaviours and the really great behaviours. This is the stage where you will develop drive and intensity for each behaviour. Do not progress from this stage until you have the drive and intensity you like.

Work in many locations, keeping the criteria realistic and the distractions limited. Initially, keep the rate of reinforcement very high in each new location. If the rate of reinforcement drops due to the dog being too distracted, find a different location that is not so distracting or lower the criteria.

What amazed me most was the agility of their minds. The young should not be underestimated. They were full of enthusiasm, having never been asked to use their abilities for any productive purpose before. Like puppies they seemed to vie for my attention, and they frequently surprised me. I had been a wizard long enough to have stopped thinking about many things that I considered ordinary. They hadn’t. Whenever I showed them something new, their curious minds turned it over, shook it, and sometimes they found new insights I had overlooked. Sometimes parenting can be as humbling as it is rewarding.

The vibrating sounds of a big brass bell reached them from the town. Nekhludoff’s driver, who stood by his side, and the other men on the raft raised their caps and crossed themselves, all except a short, dishevelled old man, who stood close to the railway and whom Nekhludoff had not noticed before. He did not cross himself, but raised his head and looked at Nekhludoff. This old man wore a patched coat, cloth trousers and worn and patched shoes. He had a small wallet on his back, and a high fur cap with the fur much rubbed on his head. “Why don’t you pray, old chap?” asked Nekhludoff’s driver as he replaced and straightened his cap. “Are you unbaptized?” “Who’s one to pray to?” asked the old man quickly, in a determinately aggressive tone. “To whom? To God, of course,” said the driver sarcastically. “And you just show me where he is, that god.” There was something so serious and firm in the expression of the old man, that the driver felt that he had to do with a strong-minded man, and was a bit abashed. And trying not to show this, not to be silenced, and not to be put to shame before the crowd that was observing them, he answered quickly. “Where? In heaven, of course.” “And have you been up there?” “Whether I’ve been or not, every one knows that you must pray to God.” “No one has ever seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father he hath declared him,” said the old man in the same rapid manner, and with a severe frown on his brow. “It’s clear you are not a Christian, but a hole worshipper. You pray to a hole,” said the driver, shoving the handle of his whip into his girdle, pulling straight the harness on one of the horses. Some one laughed. “What is your faith, Dad?” asked a middle-aged man, who stood by his cart on the same side of the raft. “I have no kind of faith, because I believe no one--no one but myself,” said the old man as quickly and decidedly as before. “How can you believe yourself?” Nekhludoff asked, entering into a conversation with him. “You might make a mistake.” “Never in your life,” the old man said decidedly, with a toss of his head. “Then why are there different faiths?” Nekhludoff asked. “It’s just because men believe others and do not believe themselves that there are different faiths. I also believed others, and lost myself as in a swamp,--lost myself so that I had no hope of finding my way out. Old believers and new believers and Judaisers and Khlysty and Popovitzy, and Bespopovitzy and Avstriaks and Molokans and Skoptzy--every faith praises itself only, and so they all creep about like blind puppies. There are many faiths, but the spirit is one--in me and in you and in him. So that if every one believes himself all will be united. Every one be himself, and all will be as one.” The old man spoke loudly and often looked round, evidently wishing that as many as possible should hear him. “And have you long held this faith?” “I? A long time. This is the twenty-third year that they persecute me.” “Persecute you? How?” “As they persecuted Christ, so they persecute me. They seize me, and take me before the courts and before the priests, the Scribes and the Pharisees. Once they put me into a madhouse; but they can do nothing because I am free. They say, ‘What is your name?’ thinking I shall name myself. But I do not give myself a name. I have given up everything: I have no name, no place, no country, nor anything. I am just myself. ‘What is your name?’ ‘Man.’ ‘How old are you?’ I say, ‘I do not count my years and cannot count them, because I always was, I always shall be.’ ‘Who are your parents?’ ‘I have no parents except God and Mother Earth. God is my father.’ ‘And the Tsar? Do you recognise the Tsar?’ they say. I say, ‘Why not? He is his own Tsar, and I am my own Tsar.’ ‘Where’s the good of talking to him,’ they say, and I say, ‘I do not ask you to talk to me.’ And so they begin tormenting me.

Beginning at thirteen weeks, a pup will show more pronounced expressions of independence: the dog who only last week was your shadow, who seemed well on his way to being trained, now begins to ignore you when you call, and during training and play sessions you have to work extra hard to keep his attention. His rapid growth produces a corresponding increase in activity that makes him highly excitable and difficult to manage. While he does need plenty of exercise, for most owners this translates into walks with lots of pulling and lunging. Bad habits develop quickly. When guests come to the house, the juvenile pup turns into a juvenile delinquent, jumping up and making himself a pest, continually demanding attention. It is also common for pups of this age to become very mouthy, so that by the teething period (four to six months), they are chewing on everything, people included. To top things off, your puppy will probably go through a second fear period, when his behavior will swing from being independent and bratty (twelve to fourteen weeks) to periodically cautious and fearful (sixteen to twenty-four weeks), even of things with which he had formerly been comfortable.