At a market on Saturday when I was supposed to be working I was following Bob, the baker, down  to the end of the street where a girl sat with a box of puppies and I let her give me one. And since then we’ve all pretty much fallen in love with him. It is impossible not to. If you were here, you would be in love too. Elisa named him James and we call him Jamie, or Chubs, or Snuffle.

Our vet opened at 7:30 this morning and I called at 7:34. Jamie has been a little more tired than I’d like to see in a puppy, not eating as much as he should, and his stools were soft. Under his silky soft coat he was thinner than I would have liked. I had to tell Elisa on drive there  that we didn’t know if Jamie’s story was going to have a good ending or a bad one.  And we talked about how the puppy got sick before we knew him and that we were going to give him the best care possible. The vet says we’ll know in the next couple of days if it is serious, or not, and he’s on a bunch of different medicines to deal with various possibilities. He seemed grim and I’ve remained matter-of-fact.

When we were  home he bounded after Elisa to the front door, then ate a little lunch, took a nap, woke up and played some more. We cautiously say to each other, “He doesn’t seem that sick, does he?” and “Maybe we caught it early enough.”