We adopted Paul from the Arizona Animal Welfare league, after agonizing for a week of Christmas break. Originally, we went to look at dogs on a lark, not intending to take any home (when has that ever worked out for anyone? I still have flashbacks to the dogs I couldn’t adopt in Iowa), especially since we were leaving the next day for 2 back-to-back weeklong trips out of town. But of course we fell in love with Paul – then called Prancer; they also said his birthday was Christmas Day because they are salesmen – and suddenly had a difficulty on our hands.

We decided that we couldn’t afford to put him immediately into a kennel for two weeks, but that if he was still at the shelter after the first trip, we would snap him up. Then we spent our entire week refreshing the shelter’s webpage, making sure his picture was still there. And a twelve-hour car ride home tossing around name ideas. (As an aside, we still hadn’t settled on anything when I called the kennel to make an appointment for him, so I just told them the first name that came to mind – Duck – which they still call him when I’m not paying attention.)

Now I spend all my time with this weirdo dog whom I love, and one of the best parts about him is that we have no idea what his life was life before he reached the shelter. AAWL was unclear on that point – he’d been wandering the streets, but it’s hard to say what came before that. They also listed two different ages for him: 11 months and 4 years. We assume it was 4 years, but we may never know.

Anyway, this is more or less what I imagine his life was like in the past. I may bring him back from more-clearly-madcap adventures in the future, if I can ever get him to sit still enough to draw.