Gotcha!

It was a fluke, really. A friend had called to tell me about her kittens, which she found on a new website called Petfinder.com. "It's so neat," she said. "You type in your zipcode and it shows you all the animals for adoption in your area."

I was sitting next to my computer, so I typed in ours. And there was the ad:

Husky/Jindo puppies. Ready in January.

No pictures. Not even a description. Just the telephone number of a shelter in coastal Maine. But something clicked. I'd always wanted a husky. I didn't even know what a jindo was. But when I looked up the breed on the web, I became enamored with the clever, agile dogs I saw there. I read the ad again and knew: these were the puppies for us. I was sure of it.

That night, I brought home file photos of jindos and huskies for Greg. Over dinner, we talked it over. And then we talked some more. We woke up the next morning and talked more still. The next day, we drove to the shelter. There, we met a shy little dog with blue eyes and a white blaze running down her snout.

And then we fell in love.

.

Happy Gotcha Day, Ari. Thanks for three years of laughs and adventures and the very best kind of puppy love.