Introducing...

This is Sandy.

She belongs to us now.

She is about 3, a beagle mix, and a total sweetheart.

I have dithered more over the question of adopting a permanent dog than I ever dithered over the idea of adding another human to the family, but the dog question has been answered now and the answer is Sandy.

I had been joking with Pete that maybe I would adopt a dog and name it Peter so I wouldn't miss him quite as much -- ha ha ha, I'm so hilarious -- but it was a joke. I surprised myself on Saturday morning by asking Elwood and Stella if they were interested in going to the weekly adoption event hosted by the organization we used to foster for. Okay, they said, and off we went.

Neither of the dogs I'd been interested in had been able to come. I moseyed down the aisle and said hello to someone I knew. We chatted about his foster dog briefly, and I became aware of a particularly intense stare emanating from the crate next door. 

Sandy had tucked herself in the corner of her crate. She was huddled up there, a little trembly, with enormous beseeching eyes.

Now you guys, I'm not very sentimental about rescue dogs. I've cleaned up a lot of foster dog messes; I've dealt with a lot of foster dog misbehavior. I've agreed to bring dogs into my house based on their adorable pictures and then I have been positively elated when they got adopted. You can't judge a dog by its temporarily adorable face; you have to wait and see how many shoes it will try to eat and how annoying its counter-surfing will be.

I did not think I would be stirred by a pair of beseeching eyes, but I was mistaken about that.

I have to admit that for three years now I have read the glowing adoption posts in the rescue's Facebook group with a measure of skepticism. And yet here I am, thinking, "Maybe I'll call this post 'Besotted.'" 

Tonight I went outside to mow the grass. After she saw me walk out the door Sandy nosed into our bedroom and hopped up on the bed, where I had left the dress I wore to Mass earlier today. She curled herself up on top of it, and declined to move until I came back in. "Oh, Jamie," her tail said when I returned, "now it is time to sit on the couch together! And I will stretch my whole self out against you, because full-body contact is the best kind of contact, and then you may give me skritches."

Eloquent tail, eloquent eyes, with 20-odd pounds of snuggly in between. She's the best.