Our family’s big ticket Christmas gift this year was a new puppy, though I guess that’s a little redundant (are there old puppies?). We brought her home from the breeder’s farm in KY yesterday. How we found our way to this particular dog, from these particular folks, is a story unto itself, I suppose. My daughter—now nine—has long been obsessed with animals and has always wanted a dog. Both my husband and I grew up with them, but we already have a beloved elderly cat as well as an unfenced yard, so we’ve been hesitant to add a puppy to the mix. But sometimes it’s just time, and a confluence of concrete and ineffable factors makes this apparent. Like loss, for example. Just so much loss taking on so many different shapes over the past few years that welcoming something new into our lives felt strangely imperative. Not as a substitute for those losses, but a tonic to them, perhaps. And while I wanted to adopt a rescue from a shelter, my daughter became fixated on the relatively rare breed my husband grew up with: English Shepherds. They’re next to impossible to find, with breeders in far flung corners of the country and waitlists for unpredictably timed litters, but our daughter managed to find one within a six hour drive, the only puppy left from last spring’s brood. Cowgirl was, if not the runt of the litter, then certainly overshadowed by her siblings, all of whom got scooped up quickly. Sweet tempered and skittish, she hadn’t shown much promise working the cows, so her owners put her up for adoption at 10 months. We said we’d take her, not exactly sight unseen (they sent a recent photo), but close. It felt like quite the leap of faith, driving all that way for an unknown quantity, but I needed to take this leap more than I’ve needed anything in a while (my daughter, of course, carried nothing but absolute conviction in her heart). Dear reader, it was rewarded.
Tosca is my shepherd; I shall not want.
Well, then 