-^-for posterity-^-

yesterday we got a dog.

he’s really the most adorable thing i’ve ever seen and i’ve seen a bunch of things. he has a long snout and ears that flop down limply. his eyes are black and his tail is curled up and over and resembles a question mark. the eyes have wrinkles above them which make him look inquisitive. his nose is black and it is surrounded by a thin band of white which comes together in the middle and shoots up his forehead. he has a wonderfully thin white streak running between his eyes. the white is contrasted by large black circles around his eyes. the rest of him is white with brown blotch marks. if he was larger and produced milk, i’m sure he could be mistaken for a cow. his back legs are bowed out.

he’s only one month old so concepts like, “this is the bathroom”, and, “now we go to bed”, and, “no, don’t eat my new shirt”, are all foreign. he’s so young he’s always shaking and exploring.

we were given this dog, jota is his name (jack had a dog when he lived in costa rica named jota. i had no better ideas seeing as how my family has always come up with terrible names for pets: christopher, jennifer.) by a friend in the agricultural department. he’s been living the last week under a set of bunk beds in the room where they carry out their experiments on fish and such.

last night we went to bed after a long day of adjusting. he’s only a baby. he went to bed on my college newspaper sweatshirt that i brought along incase there was a miraculous climate change. at about one i was woken up by the most energetic dog i’d ever seen. he took my rain parka off of a shelf that i was sure was too high for him. he ran all about the room shaking it and yelping. i ushered him up to the roof incase he had to go to the bathroom. he didn’t, and just ran around shaking with excitement. i took him back to bed. he stayed up trouncing about the room and peeing.

at three he woke me up again. i took him out again and he made his circles in the gravel on rooftop. i took him back. at four i he woke me up because he was crying. he had no one to play with. i took him under my mosquito net and let him trounce around there. that appeased him. he trounced from my feet to my head continually biting me. it tickled. i couldn’t laugh because i was exhausted.

surprisingly enough, he didn’t wake me up again. he decided that the sweatshirt that we had laid out for him wasn’t good enough to sleep on. i have a small cubbyhole where i keep my socks and underwear. he burrowed in there, right next to my sleeping head, and fell asleep. i woke up in the morning to find him staring at me.

so, today i’m groggy. it was my first night of being a parent and it wasn’t too enjoyable. i couldn’t ignore the whimpers, or the sound of my parka being torn to shreds, or the yelping. this morning, jota’s running around the room as only a puppy can: half galloping, half jumping, and completely uncoordinated. jack and i are fathers. we needed something that would love us unconditionally and that we could boss around. sometimes, our lives here seem to be spinning out of control. we needed something that we could control.

oh, this morning, he left me four or five small presents. the joys of parenting.