Sweet Liddle La

At this hour one year ago, I was spending the last quiet moments at home with the bebe'.

I remember the instant I first saw her - watching me, quiet, from across the parking lot.  My then-four-year-old niece was with me, to find a dog to adopt, and Sidney was the first thing I saw, before we even reached the stand outside the pet store.  She had the oddest looking mask (Sid was part husky), and she was so big to me.  I had thought I'd get a dog more like the medium springer spaniel, or even the cocker-poo, I'd grown up with.  A fifty pound pet would be unprecedented for my family.

She was strong from the moment we greeted her and took her for a short walk to the back of the store.  She was *very* good with my niece, which was the single most important thing to me (much more recently, on a different walk to the back of a different pet store, Penelope was good with the cats there, which was the priority for a new time).  Niece and I both liked her personality, her very funny face, just ... something ... about her.  I honestly don't even know what it was anymore, just that ever so quiet click we like to call chemistry.

I'd met another dog that week, a smaller one who was younger, and still remember the conversation I had with Zuba back then.  "Diane, you've already nicknamed the older dog Siddy.  You know which one you really want."

And I was blessed to get her.  She made me better.

She had one friend she was allowed to kiss in the face - every rule needs an exception.  Sometimes, her desire to kiss became so palpable; it is the same with Pen sometimes.  But she got a lot of love, my Sid.

She was the bebe'.  Gossamer - Penny - they are babies.  I adopted them both when they really were babies.  But Siddy was four when I met her (she and my niece were about one week apart in age, actually).  Bebe' was a nickname that came along years into our relationship.  I called her Small One, I called her bebe' - she was the little one in my life, even though I never saw her in any way actually as infantile.  Bebe' meant something more like a familial thing.  It meant I was her protector, it meant I took responsibility for her.

It was because of her puppy head.

She was the best girl in the history of ever.  Yes, and the magic of dogs (of cats, too) is that *all* of them are the best.

But she was my first dog, the first one I took responsibility for, the first who depended on me.  Who was *mine*.  Sidney was my first pack.

She was the best.

I miss my girl.  I can't believe it's been a year.