"It's my JOB to watch you!"

Last weekend, Olive and I went to visit her mother Lacey, her sisters Gem and Crystal “The Pistol” and her Aunt Ava which makes this sound like a scene from a Christopher Durang play. Gem (already winning at shows) and Crystal are beautiful too, but they are slightly bigger and “doggier” than Olive. Unlike Olive, the Duchess of Weimbridge, they spend much of their time outdoors with the rest of their melodious pack. We arrive at the breeder’s house and Crystal and Gem are energetically racing back and forth inside their zoo-sized pen like two squabbling sister panthers. Or panther sisters. But NOT sister wives. I don’t think that Olive realizes that she is related to these dogs. All she knows is that they are dogs AND they look like her. Deborah puts Gem and Crystal in the house so Olive can have the pen all to herself while we sit at the picnic table on this bright, sunny day. Lacey and Ava are in separate pens nearby, quietly meandering around their pens. Ava who just delivered a litter of eight in March, is giving her nipples a rest. Good thing too, because they are hanging down so far, they may reach Cape Horn. Olive is disinterested. All she knows is that she has been separated from me. She’s not crazy about this ESPECIALLY when she can see me. As far as Olive is concerned, she is as alone as Papillon on Devil’s Island. “WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO.” She stops intermittently, presumably to catch her breath, or gobble up some dirt. God forbid I even look in her direction. It starts all over again. “WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO.” “OLIVE, FOR GOD’S SAKE. I’M RIGHT HERE. GO EAT A BIRD. LOOK! THERE’S A UNICORN.” Besides their beauty and brains they also have something else in common. A set of lungs the size of Peru.