Where’s the peanut butter?!

It’s hard to believe it’s been this long but one year ago yesterday we brought you home. You so tiny we had to section off your crate so that you fit without too much space. You walked clumsily around the house - learning the boundaries of your growing body and its intersections with your new home. You threw yourself into the nooks, looking for what felt most comfortable. In front of the stove? The corner near the wine rack? Snuggled between the couch and ottoman?

The first week was a little traumatic for your big brother, Jupiter. He wasn’t happy at all to share the house or yard with your kind and you didn’t yet understand the pain his claws can inflict. I should have warned you about this. I’ve spent enough mornings engrossed in catching up on news on the computer when he would sneak up on me, too, issuing his brief, dorsal warning - “mgnraoooo!!!” - before sinking his sharp claws deep in my most fleshy parts. But you learned this lesson yourself and continue with remedial lessons every so often through to today.

You also took your first trips to the neighborhood park where you would cultivate a refined palate for sticks and where we explored the wreckage of the fall 2006 Seattle storms . You were quick to identify (and best ) your key adversaries at home. You also had your first taste of flesh and would never, ever allow me to keep the house meat-free from that day forward.

That fall we took our first trip out in the snow, bathed in the midnight wash of the streetlights . You expanded your wardrobe and came with me and Tanya to Twin Falls and leapt for treats on the KVI park beach, now fully grown . You and Jupiter have become famous friends - you, the only dog he comes to visit outdoors; he, the only cat whose ears you will groom. And sometimes you still act like the puppy you were when you first came home, still unsure of exactly where your body fits and where it does not.

So though your real birthday is some time in February, observing it now feels right.