Soapbox

This weekend, while wandering through Walmart with my kids, I came upon something that I found disturbing.
Actually, just wandering through Walmart is somewhat disturbing for me, but in some small towns, and for some items, one has few other options. Which is, of course, their entire corporate goal in a nutshell. But I digress.

There, taking up an entire endcap in the toy department was the newest offering in the Barbie line of fake womanhood marketed to American girls: Biker Barbie. She is some sort of Harley Davidson tribute/wetdream/nightmare, resplendent in pink leather chaps no less, over blue jeans, a tight, lace-up corset style leather vest (half-way unlaced!) and a huge Harley tattoo across her upper back and shoulders.  (And yes, I understand that this doll is, in theory, marketed for adult “Collectors” but it was on an end cap in the toy department)

Biker Barbie has somewhat “edgier” platinum blonde hair and make-up, but rest assured that she still sports that sexy yet sexless feminine ideal that women and girls are supposed to embrace and emulate: utterly hairless body, disproportionately long legs, impossibly narrow, almost boyish hips and waist, huge thrusting breasts and overly large, cow-like eyes. Behind her, in image only, is her own hog, making her the queen of the road.
Is this liberation? Barbie meets the open road, commander of her machine, true master of her destiny!? Perhaps. I certainly do not, in theory, have any issue with an adult doll who rides a motorcycle, and while I’m not sure a massive tattoo is something I want little girls to be encouraged to get, plenty of wonderful people whom little girls look up to in real life have them. So why not Barbie? But….

I remember when they introduced Dr. Barbie when Katie was little, and I felt so… cheated. Barbie is a doctor now! Good for her! She’s smart and professional, with dreams beyond just snagging Ken and driving around in that stupid pink convertible! So… why is she wearing a micro-miniskirt under her white lab coat and tottering around in pink stiletto slut pumps? How can a doctor possibly do rounds like that? What patient is going to listen to what she is saying when she’s flashing that much leg?

This is progress? It reminds me of the Virginia Slims commercial: “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Sure! Now women can get lung cancer from fashionablecigarettes! Wow- lucky us!
What kind of message are we sending? It’s OK to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or even to ride a motorcycle, ladies- as long as you wear pink and keep yourself looking like eye-candy at all times!
It would have been too much to expect to see Barbie looking like a strong, independent leather-lesbian biker. I get that. But God forbid Barbie ride her Harley in a t-shirt and jacket. Or wear a helmet!

All the “professional” Barbies I have ever seen retain that hyper-sexed image in some way. And, for every Barbie doll who is an artist or a volleyball player, there are 5 or 6 Barbie Dream Princesses with tiaras and permanent eye shadow. I’m sure Mattel marketing would tell us that is what they offer because this is what little girls want: the princess bride fantasy. But I would argue that this is what girls want mostly because this is what we tell them, over and over, in a hundred ways both subtle and overt, is the best they can aspire to!

Consider almost every Disney teen awakening movie you have ever seen, featuring the mean, beautiful rich girl who is cruel to but eventually vanquished by the sweet, honest plain girl… who even gets the mean girl’s boyfriend when someone shows her how to put on make-up and it turns out that she is beautiful too!!
Ta da! How convenient.
I think of all the popular female singers out there- some quite talented, who cannot seem to open their mouth without first baring their breasts and shaking their ass for the camera. Do they have so little faith in their own voice that they think no one will listen to them if they don’t put on a soft-core porn show? Or do they consider a singer’s voice to be of secondary importance to her looks? Once again: be whatever you want to be girls,  reach for the stars– just make sure you are flashing some cleavage at all times.

What are we telling our daughters? When Hillary Clinton was running for president, remember how many people sniped~ not about her policies or programs, which were legitimate targets- but her thick ankles and the clothes she wore?! Elena Kagen got the same treatment. Who would want a president or supreme Court justice that doesn’t look like a Barbie doll?!

This issue neither began nor ends with Barbie, Biker bitch or otherwise. Barbie is only a symptom of a low-level but chronic malaise in America.
We confuse and frustrate our daughters, bombarding them with impossible ideals of the beautiful, thin, big chested, perfect nosed, elegantly coiffed women who wake up in the morning with lip gloss on and can walk all day in 4″ heels, in slow motion, with their hair blowing sexily in the wind… even indoors. Every police force, law office and hospital on television is populated by women like this (and only women like this), all wearing tight, half-buttoned clothes with perfect eyeliner and lipstick after a 12 hour day, and we are told it is “realism” because their character occasionally worries about her sick kid. Yeah, thanks, that makes them just like us!
We tell our girls, “Go to college! Be smart! Make something of yourself…. but you’d better be hot while you do it, or you’re a failure.” Without “the look” you’re just a sweet old maid cat lady.

I know- I need to get over it. America will always value the beauty queen over the scholar or leader; the Victoria’s Secret “angel” in garters, stilettos and pouty, bee-stung lips over the Secretary of State who merely prevents a war. And while the TV beauty isn’t always insipid or stupid, looks are clearly the important part of the package, more important than brains, or heart.
It starts with the baby beauty pageants, where the contestants sport tiny wigs- because a 10 month old isn’t actually beautiful if she doesn’t have a full head of wavy, sexy, adult hair to blow in the wind… even indoors.

You know when I will begin to believe that things are truly progressing for American women? When they come out with  a Michelle Obama Barbie: feet flat in cute, practical shoes, strong arms, smaller breasts, clothes off the rack from Old Navy-  proud and smart and out to do good and change the world. That’s what I’d like to see on the shelves of Walmart.
Yeah. I’m not holding my breath.

Attention customers!
The management and staff would like to take this opportunity to remind you
that this store was not put on earth
to be your personal coffeecup holder,  playpen or toybox.
The proper place to dispose of your half-empty vente soy decaf latte
is not on a shelf of scrapbook paper.
We have trash cans. Ask us!

Also, please do not allow your children
to wipe their noses on the new autumn suedes collection,
chase each other up and down the aisles
or climb on shelves filled with glass objects.
We do not  appreciate you letting them open boxes and distribute the contents
or color with the sharpie markers on our floor tiles simply because-
hey, it keeps them from bugging you while you chat on your phone
about your nail appointment tomorrow.

No, the fact that you have to get little Madison to soccer by four
does not entitle you skip to the head of the line,
it simply demonstrates your poor time management
and a herd mentality when it comes to chosing names.

This is a craft store. It says so in big letters on the front of the building.
We do not sell office supplies, tube socks or milk,
regardless of how convenient it would be for you if we did.
So don’t get in my face about what we don’t carry,
as if I personally made the decision not to stock it
because I knew you were coming in and wanted to ruin your day!

Please do not attempt to communicate with me through hand gestures
or by mouthing words across your cell phone call.
If you can not hang up long enough to speak to me
I will go assist a customer who can!
I may work for menial wages, but I have a college degree-
magne cum laude, bitch!- so don’t talk to me like I rode the short bus to school!
Ok, I have poor career planning skills,
but I can still write an expository paper- with footnotes!-
on a book I"ve never read, in an hour and a half,
that would make any English teacher in America weep with joy!

And by the way, we announced 10 minutes ago that the store is closing.
Unless you are taking out the trash or cleaning our bathrooms,
that means you have to go home!
News flash: even retail drones have homes and lives,
and we would like to get back to them as soon as possible.
So put down the glue gun, go get your child
(who is around the corner opening packages of modeling clay by the way-
thanks for that!)
and get the hell out of here!

For your convenience, this store will re-open tomorrow at 9 AM.
Please feel free to come back then because tomorrow is my day off!
Thank you and have a pleasant evening.

Tippy-toe paws of downy fur,
steady blue eyes and a damp pink nose,
chewing my toes and ready to play
at five o'clock in the morning-
then fast asleep beneath the kitchen chair
when I pick up the leash at 8 AM.

Small one, sometimes I think
you are nothing more than a living mouth
with four feet and a bladder!
Don't give me that innocent look,
you've been gnawing on something,
I just know it!
Spit out those car keys!
Don't chew the computer cord
and let go of my pants leg!
Awww, don't pee in the flowers.
Sit, baby, sit. Please!
Heavens, where did you find an ink pen?

I sit on the floor to put my shoes on, and,
abandoning the thrill of attacking a cardboard box,
you squirm onto my busy lap.
I move to push you off but,
with a sigh of great contentment
and the total trust and faithfulness
that only baby things possess,
you are asleep in an instant,
one leg trailing behind you on the floor.

My previously impatient hand
rests gently on your head,
strokes your satin ears
and I can't remember where it was
I was going in such a hurry, anyway.

    Once upon a time there were two little girls, and they were best friends. I can see them so clearly now in my mind: one with red curls, chubby cheeks and freckles; the other with a thin face and frizzy blond hair. I see their two heads bent together, making clothes for their paper dolls or writing a story. I see them talking for hours half-way up the maple tree and walking in the moonlight in their nightgowns on a warm summer night, and laughing, always laughing.

   We were called "the two Tracys", Tracy Lynne and Tracy Jean, and for most of the years between kindergarten and eighth grade we practically lived in each others pockets. We were best friends in the truest sense of the phrase. We slept at each others houses, raided each others refrigerators, shared each others secrets. Tracy and I, often accompanied by her little sister Stephanie, were always writing stories, acting out plays, dreaming dreams and, I guess,  helping each other grow up.

   I met Tracy in kindergarten at West Elementary school. I noticed her right away, of course, because of her name, and her lovely red hair. She was always nicely dressed, and I remember she had a box of grown-up, skinny crayons instead of the fat ones the rest of us kindergartners used.  At my house we had a big old box of odds and ends of various and sundry crayons. I don’t know if I had ever beheld a pristine box of 48 unbroken crayons before, let alone in the hands of a 5 year old. She let me use them- once. I remember thinking, "I should be friends with this girl".

   And indeed,  we became friends and occasionally went to visit each others’ homes.  I invited her to sleep over at my house once that first year but it didn’t go well: she got homesick and her father had to take her home after supper. I was sad and frustrated, but my mother explained that not all children grew up sleeping over at various cousins and grandparents’ houses all the time, as I had.

   It was either in kindergarten or first grade that the bee incident occurred. Tracy lived in a house perched on a hill, and the back yard was a steep drop off, covered with just ground cover, as mowing that slope would have been almost impossible. One day she and I and  Stephanie were playing and Tracy ran down the hill with us in pursuit. Suddenly she stopped and shrieked, "Mommy! The Bees are at me!"
   Her mother raced down the hill and snatched her from where she stood, frozen in pain and terror, over the yellow jacket nest she had stepped in. Stephanie and I got a few stings that afternoon, but Tracy had so many that we took a trip to the Emergency room to get an allergy shot, just in case. When we got home her mother put us all in a cool baking soda bath- I remember the porcelain tub and the way our voices echoed as we splashed and talked- and we counted all the stings. 47.
    Tracy Jean Foster, the girl who survived 47 stings at one time. How could you not be impressed? How could you not hang out with this girl, even if she wasn’t up to spending the night yet?

      My family bought a big house over on the east side of town and so I went to first grade at East Elementary school, and we didn’t see each other very often that year.  I think it was before second grade that Tracy’s family bought a house on the same street. I remember clearly counting down the days in joyful anticipation of her moving in. I knew it was the beginning of something big. Soon we could see each other every day! We could visit any time we wanted to, walk to school together and I would always have someone really interesting to play with. With  Melissa who lived behind me, I played horses and the Partridge Family (her favorite show). With Charlotte (who had an actual canopy bed) I dressed up and played princesses. That was all fine, but with Tracy- I took on the world.

   In addition to purely making noise and running off energy games kids play, like "bee-bombs" and "thorn finger" we were constantly coming up with some adventure  in our imaginations And usually, we wrote a story about it. Tracy was the leader, and she usually had the most interesting ideas, so I was happy to follow.  Some of our favorite themes that I recall were: orphans on the train bound for boarding school who run away, Little House on the Prairie (but we had to make up a new character because no one wanted to be that drippy sister Mary) , orphans at boarding school who out-wit the cruel headmistress… and then there was Star Trek.

   Her parents owned a color console television (!) and  many a Saturday night I hauled over my sleeping bag and we lay on the living room floor and watched the show with her parents. And so of course we incorporated Star Trek into our imagination games, but though we had our favorite characters (Chekov and Sulu) we ended up inventing our own characters to add to the cast.
  In addtion to the dashing, irreverent character Lieutenant…. Somebody that Tracy invented  as her alter ego,  she also came up with an unlucky sap named "Erwuzden Beesuckle" whom we adored putting into our games just because we had so much fun saying his name. Our Enterprise had as her Doctor one "Deformed Kellogg" whose face so wrinkled that it looked like a corn flake. This was the irreverent way her mind worked, and I loved it. Tracy had a flair that I desperately wished to have.
   We wrote a Star Trek play- a comedy, of course- featuring all these characters, and we rehearsed it endlessly. you see, Stephanie (the jester) kept deliberately flubbing her entrance and ad-libbing a new opening line and we would all dissolve into gales of laughter, after which Tracy insisted we go back and try again from the beginning. I don’t remember if we ever actually performed it for her patient parents or just rehearsed  it until we were bored and moved on.

   In addition to adventures like Star Trek, Tracy introduced me to mystery and thrillers. Together we read  a script she found in an old book of "Sorry, Wrong Number" as a radio play, and it consumed our imaginations for weeks. She also loved the show "Dark Shadows". We weren’t allowed to watch it at my house so after school I would head to the Fosters and we’d watch Dark Shadows, which I loved, and then The Price is Right, (which I didn’t) and when the final credits rolled I knew it was time to dash home ASAP for dinner.

   It was the great disappointment of our elementary school years that somehow we never managed to be assigned to the same class. Year after year we would walk to school at the end of summer when the class lists we posted, fingers crossed, and each year our hopes were dashed. Of course the teachers deliberately separated the two Tracy’s, probably figuring that we would just talk to each other all the time and want to be together in everything we did. I’m sure it made sense from an educational standpoint, but it broke my heart. It was like not being with your own twin!

    The Fosters had a house they visited summers down by the Ohio River, and sometimes they would take me along for a few days. It was heaven. We had acres to roam over, and SO many more things to imagine, plus her dad took us fishing. My grandpa had taught me how to fish, but the Big Darby creek and the Ohio river were very different.
    One summer my family stayed at a place called "Rolling Acres Vacation Farm" and took Tracy and Stephanie along. There was an old church with an ancient cemetery nearby and I was enthralled, touching the old stones and trying to make out eroded inscriptions, connecting long-ago families. Tracy decided that we must have a church service, and of course she would officiate, and so we wrote a script for that too. Whenever we weren’t sure what should come next we would say "And now, let us pray" and for the hymn we did "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" because I saw it in the hymnal and recognized the tune. My mother still has our script saved somewhere.

   My birthday is at the end of June, which I always hated because it meant I never got to have a party at school and bring cupcakes. (I was convinced that the kids would begin to like me if I could just bring in cupcakes!) But the up-side was that I could have a birthday sleep-over in my back yard. Most years we set up either the family tent or, later, our folding trailer. Tracy, Stephanie and I stayed up most of the night playing cards, eating snacks and talking and giggling and talking.
   One year we decided we were bored with cards and hungry. Tracy pointed out that it was only a few blocks over to the Stop-N-Go and so, in our nightgowns, we walked to the store some time after midnight. I remember vividly dancing and leaping under the street lights to watch our shadows move. It never occurred to us that this might not be a safe thing to do. In Athens in those days we almost never even locked our doors when we went away. Still, I’m sure that our mothers would have had a conniption if they knew about it.

    When we were in fourth or fifth grade, a boy from our grade named Keith died of cancer. Of course this was a desperately sad thing.  Many of us hadn’t known Keith very well because he had been sick for a long time and missed a lot of school, but  for some reason the principal decided that everyone in his grade needed to go to the funeral. There we were, swinging our short legs in the chairs at the funeral home behind my house, feeling awkward and uncomfortable witnessing the real grief of his family.
    For Tracy and I, this was the first funeral we had ever attended, and human nature being what it was, we kept finding ourselves possessed with fits of giggles. We tried to think of serious things to stop them- well I did anyway. Each time I would have myself in hand, Tracy would turn to me and pull a tragic mime of a sad face, and off  we would go into laughter, earning the wrath of Miss Ashworth. Years later my mother and sisters and I were in the exact situation at a cousin’s funeral service. None of us could look each other in the eye for fear of setting off paroxysms of coughing, and I kept thinking of Tracy and her sad face.

    Middle school was the beginning of the change. We could have been in class together at last, but I didn’t score terribly high in math, and so even though my English and science grades were probably on par with hers, Tracy was put in "first tier" classes and I was relegated to tier two. We still went to and from school together every day and talked a lot, but Tracy began to spend time with a girl named Carolyn, and I found I really like Carolyn’s friend Peggy. The four of us sometimes spent time all together but gradually we became more "Tracy and Carolyn" and "Tracy and Peggy".
   As we got older we found that we had less in common, and in high school we pretty much went our separate ways. We were still quite friendly… just not really friends. I got into theater and took different classes and hung with a different group most of the time. Tracy was interested in boys, who were most definitely not interested in me, so I couldn’t blame her for not hanging around.
    After high school, I don’t remember seeing her at all, although I ran into her parents in town a few times during college and then in nursing school.

   One day a few years ago, I brought in the mail and found a letter from Tracy Jean. I was amazed and delighted that she would want to find me again after so many years. In the years since then I have reached out and found a lot of lost friends, but Tracy is the only one who has ever come looking for me. We corresponded a few times-  I told her about my kids and my poetry and she sent me an essay she had written and had published, and some pictures of her new house, her husband and her cat. We didn’t write often, but it was always a treat to find a letter from her in the mail. After almost 30 years we were both  very different, of course, but that didn’t matter. We still connected as "the Two Tracys". We talked about getting together- we weren’t that far apart, but it didn’t work out, and we figured there would be time to arrange something later.

   Yesterday my dad called to tell me that he had heard, through a friend of her parents, that Tracy had died the day before. He had almost no information about what had happened except that it involved a coma and turning off the ventilators. I was in shock.
  This being the modern age, I posted about it on Facebook and high school friends began replying with messages of surprise and sadness- and condolences for me. For me! I hadn’t seen the woman since I was 18 years old, so their concern, while appreciated, seemed a trifle misplaced.
   Last night had a sad dream about Tracy and her sister Stephanie, that they were both ill, but still so funny and warm and loving. This morning I found her obituary on line and made some calls to see if I could get my shift covered at work to go. Then I went up to take a shower, and that’s when it hit me. I leaned against the cool tiles and let the water run over me and just sobbed.
   "I hate being old!" I wept at last, though that’s not really it. I think I just miss those two funny, crazy little girls. I miss smashing up cold Wonder bread into tiny, dense cubes and calling it "metal bread" and laying on our backs in the grass, looking up at the sky, dreaming. I miss knocking on her front door and knowing I would always be welcomed in. I think everyone should have a place like that. Thank you, thank you Fosters, for welcoming the odd little chatter-box that I was into your family for all those years!

   It occurs to me today, looking back, what an amazing gift it is to be able to have a best friend like that. And it is a gift that never stops giving, because at that age, the bonds we form become part of the foundation of who we are for the rest of our lives. The lessons I leared in our adventures I carry with me today. So I suppose that since I am still, deep inside, that skinny blond girl, then  red-headed Tracy Jean is still with me, whispering in my ear, and we are still the best of friends.
    I like that thought.

So I’ve got this kid… and last week she brought home a pit bull.

   Katie spent her senior year’s internship working at the Franklin County Dog Shelter. She would come home covered with hair, de-wormer medicine and overflowing with love for all the dogs there, large and small.
   On the night of July 3rd as she was coming home around 11 PM and a big pit bull ran out in front of her car just a few blocks from our house and she narrowly avoided hitting him. She stopped to see if he was alright, saw he had no collar and, worried that he wouldn’t be so lucky with the next car that came along, she did what any bleeding heart dog lover would do. She opened the back door and whistled.
    The dog hopped happily in the car, and she drove home.
    "Um, dad" she phoned from the curb outside. "Could you come outside? And… bring a leash?"

   I admit I was taken aback when I threw on a sweater and joined them on the front porch. The dog was huge, and clearly at least one parent was a pit bull. Other than the pit bull-ish features it was quite good looking, very healthy and despite being with total strangers and unnerved by the firecrackers the neighborhood a**holes were setting off all around, seemed gentle enough. Katie put the dog on Boomer’s old leash and said she was going to walk him around the neighborhood for a while, hoping to encounter someone out looking for him.
   "Honey, I"m not sure it’s a good idea for you to walk around after dark" I said.
   "Mom- I"m walking a pit bull!" she pointed out, and what could I say? So I went to bed.
     After she returned she and her dad sat out front for another hour under the porch light, hoping someone would drive past and spot him there. No success. So she put the dog, an old scrap of rug and a bowl of water in the garage, and she curled up on the bench seat that had been removed from my van,  to keep him company.
   When I opened the door and peered out in the morning, Katie was asleep on the seat, curled tightly under a small corner of the blanket. The dog had pulled the rest ont o the floor and was laying on it. He saw me and wagged politely.
   Wow. A pit bull in my house. Guess I’d better feed it.

    We weren’t sure how Rocket and he would take to each other- the dog could have put Rocket’s entire head in his mouth! But they met, Rocket gave a warning "I’m the boss" growl or two, the dog backed away immediately, and things were cool.
    From her months working at the dog shelter, Katie knew that if this guy was not claimed by his owners within 3 days, they would euthanize him.
   "They don’t put pits up for adoption, mom. They  don’t want people taking them just to make them fight. I don’t want to take him there if we don’t have to. Can we keep him here for a few days?" And what could I say to that?
   At first I was worried that this dog, obviously still quite young, would just destroy my house. Pit bulls, after all, are legendary for their jaw power. But this fellow would grab up one of Rocket’s little stuffed "babies" and chew and chew on it- and leave it without a mark! I was amazed.
    Katie made up a bunch of fliers and put them up all over the neighborhood and we hoped for a phone call soon. In the meantime, we figured we needed to call him something other than "the dog" and eventually settled on "Moose". It was appropriate to his big gallumphing size yet gentle nature, and it also seemed very appropriate: we already had a "Rocket J. Squirrel" so now we had "Bullwinkle Moose."

   By the end of that first morning, I was in love with Moose. By the end of the next day, I think that, if he hadn’t been a pit bull, I"d have driven around the neighborhood and taken down the fliers so we could just keep him. He was the most sweet, funny and endearing dog I’ve met. When I was working in the garden, Moose tried to steal my trowel to play with. When I put a stop to that, he went after the small sycamore log I had pulled from the firewood pile to prop the sprinkler head where I wanted it. I shooed him away and tucked the log under the sprinkler. Moose watched me, and after a minute, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him slowly stalk up behind me, lean his head forward and delicately grab the edge of the log with his teeth and pull it out from under the sprinkler.
   "Moose!" I yelled and he snatched up his prize and went running away delightedly, all long legs and flopping ears, begging me to chase him to get it back. So of course I did, laughing all the while.

    But all good things come to an end. After 3 days Katie decided to take fliers to all the local vets offices and out to the dog shelter. That evening, while she was at a friends’ house, she got a call. The woman described her missing dog and when Katie said  "Yep- I"m pretty sure he’s in my back yard" the woman started to cry with relief. Katie came home and she and I put Moose in her car. The woman lived only about 5 blocks from us. Unnerved by the fireworks, Moose had slipped his collar and jumped the fence only a block or so from where Katie had encountered him.
    When we turned onto the street, we could see a woman and two young girls standing on the sidewalk, looking hopefully at our car.
    "Moose- you have kids! You didn’t tell me you had little girls!" I admonished. When they saw his big head through the window, the girls started jumping up and down and the woman put her hands to her mouth. They all rushed to the car before Katie even ahd the engine turned off.
   "Oh, it’s him! It’s Buddy! Oh Buddy, we were so worried about you!! I can’t believe you’re OK!" They swarmed him as he hopped happily out of the backseat. A door across the street opened and a neighbor came out- "Hey- Buddy is back!" (Buddy? No way. You should consider "Moose" instead)
    Well it was the best of all possible endings. The woman, tearful in her gratitude, offered Katie a reward, which she turned down. We said goodbye and drove back home quietly.   We were happy… yet a little sad.
    "I miss Moose" I said the next morning to no one in particular. "If I hear those people aren’t taking good care of him, I"m gonna have to steal him back."

    If there is a dog god, he sent Moose to Katie’s car, I must tell you. How many other people would have taken a stray pit into their back seat? And for his part, Moose made it pretty clear to us that we are ready for another dog in our life. We watched Moose chase Boomer’s beloved kong and walk on Boomer’s leash and were just happy to see them put to use. I think we’ll start actively looking for another dog to love pretty soon.
   I’d like a herding dog. I"ve been looking at Youtube videos of Australian shepherd puppies and falling hopelessly in love. We missed out on Boomer’s puppyhood, so it would be wonderful to see what he must have been like.
  I"m sure we’ll find a lovely dog some day. Of course, he won’t be Moose…