February arrives and the farmhouse gets a dog.
This is entirely Hope's doing. Or rather, it's the consequence of Hope's sustained and methodical campaign over six weeks, which involved pointing at every dog she saw anywhere — on television, in town, in books, on the label of a bag of dog food in the grocery store — and saying dog with the specific frequency and intensity of someone who is making a point.
We lasted longer than most people would.
The dog is a three-year-old border collie mix from the rescue in Missoula named Gerald, which was already his name when we got him and felt too specific to change. He is focused and loyal and slightly neurotic in the way of working dogs who don't have enough work to do, and he has appointed himself Lily's personal security detail in a way that Dr. Reyes says she has never seen before and finds professionally interesting.
Hope is triumphant.
