to head for groceries, I took a deep breath of the salty Tillamook, OR air I'd grown to love since moving to the coast after high school. It had been good to get away from home for a while. As I climbed out of my car in the Fred Meyer parking lot, I ran the list through my head and proceeded to the entrance. I was always a sucker for the animals being sold or given away at the entrance to a store, and today was no different than any other. I spotted the box of little Labrador puppies and my mission took a pit stop. I asked if I could hold one and reached in, when I noticed a little leg sticking out from under all its brothers' and sisters' sleeping bodies. I dug further and pulled out what was obviously the runt of the litter. There was a scrawny, little, black ball of fur with a small skiff of red hair, a birthmark, on his back hip. Annoyed at being pulled from the warm cocoon, his tiny eyes came into focus on me. My heart melted. What was going on? I hadn't had a feeling quite like this in similar circumstances before. I simply couldn't put him down. I wanted him. He needed me. No one else could have him. What was going on with me? The last thing I should be getting is a dog while still trying to find my place and calling in this world. Little did I know at the time that it was me who needed him.
             Needless to say, the errands didn't get run, the house didn't get cleaned, and the groceries didn't get bought – except for, of course: a 50lb bag of puppy chow, a collar, toys, and a dog bed. As we drove home to begin our lives together, he crawled up and nestled around the back of my neck like a shirt collar and drifted off to puppy land. He had found his new cocoon. As he slept, I questioned my thinking. What had I just done? Over the next few days, we began to learn a lot about each other. I learned that no matter what contraption I built to keep him out of an area, regardless o...