Plucking plucking plucking, Jerry pinches tufts of tan fur from Ozzy and drops it on Hershey's chocolate head.

It's her wig, he tells me. Then he says, look at Ozzy. Piles of loose fur sit between his little black ears like a mohawk.

Jerry pats me on the hip. I look down and see a burst of scraggly tan fur stuck to my black pants. Thanks.

Too many tumbleweeds of fur.

At the bar a familiar face asks, were you walking a dog? Did I see you the other day?

Yup, ya did.

She lunged at the car. Looks like a work-out and a half.

Yup.

I tell Jerry on the way home last night: I had no idea, no clue that adding one dog would displace EVERYTHING in the house, everything about my routine, every minute of every day.

You let it, he says.

I have to. She needs it, I think.

At my desk and between dreams of sugar plums and Lily, Ben stops to say, hey, I took your advice…

I gave advice? I asked him. He told me what the advice was and I recognized it.

I think I had been thinking out loud about something and Ben reached into the jumbled thoughts and found something he could take with him. He could hold it up to the light somewhere and take a look at the pieces he had snared, add his own thoughts, then do what he would do. Nothing is better. It was a free little thought that had its own wings and when Ben added wind, it covered more ground.

Kind of like me with Lily. We do fine on our own, and when a car goes by, she shoots from a crouch like a sprinter and I wrap her in a bear hug.