Sunday morning

Desie has been with me for one week now. We are "two sturdy girls", as a dear friend put it, who have found each other. Desie and I are in love.

Desie is a sweet sweet girl who adores her fleece toys [she likes to make them squeak] and our yard [where, at times, she just runs around and around with abandon]. She loves loves to fetch: In the yard, she chases her tennis ball and romps with her very large stick that bumps into everything with her ardent retrieverness. In the house, she runs after her toys with [seemingly unspoken but agreed upon] dutiful respect for the furniture. When she greets me upon my return home, she wags and wags and makes circles around me. Just so you know, her nose has a bit of brown on it. And, she follows me around from room to room just as I hoped she would.

Desie is gentle and thoughtful about things. She watches me and everything I do. She is learning our routines and what is expected of her ["sit" and "wait" at the door before we go out] and what not to do ["down" when she jumps up on me]. She backs up when she wants more space between whatever it is that needs more time for understanding and her: for example, when she meets certain people she does not know and, as she did last evening, when she saw me pick up my laundry basket [apparently all of sudden] so that I could carry it upstairs. Right now she is asleep in her upstairs bed by the window. She has been sighing, perhaps to let me know she is close by or maybe to show her contentment with her new life with me. Maybe both. We are, indeed, two sturdy and cautious and thoughtful girls.