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We have decided to adopt a puppy. Our friends Isabel, with her daughter and son, have been foster-parents for some puppies she found abandoned on the side of the road about three weeks ago. She brought them home and cleaned them up before calling Jode, an American veterinarian who runs a small nongovernmental (NGO) project here, trying to empower women to raise goats for milk to produce cheese. Jode looked them over and figured they were then right around two weeks old, and with bellies full of worms, but otherwise healthy.

There were three but one was adopted in the first week, and taken to live in the new family's house immediately. After our robbery, we told Isabel we'd like to come over and meet the puppies, to start thinking more concretely about bringing a dog into our house. We found two tiny soft fuzzy creatures, full of enthusiasm and friendly as can be. Do I need to mention they were adorable? Probably not. Anyway, Isabel has two elderly but active African mutts already, and is moving back to London in a year, so has no space for any more. So these little guys are in a home with older mentor dogs and children, and we really liked them both, one grey, the other black with white spots.

It took a week or more for us to really feel like we are ready to make this leap, but we have committed. Crossing the Rubicon for us was the Amazon order of puppy supplies for a few hundred dollars for delivery in our big consumables shipment leaving the US soon. It's amazing how complex it is to set up for one of these simple tiny creatures, but then again, we're trying to buy everything at once for the first two years of life.

So the difficulty we face most immediately is a name! We have come up with several that we like, though none that feels perfect yet: Sherlock, Watson, Sven, Ole, (Andrea's not so crazy about the last two), Thor, Ponchatoula, Pontchartrain, Boudreaux, Thibodeaux, Ignatius, and Zoe's contributions, Chewbacca and Bobby. Please, let us know if you have any interesting names, or any opinions on the above names. We'd like his name to mean something or be interesting in some way, such as a figure from literature or history or a movie, or with an interesting meaning behind the word itself. We need your help! Please leave comments at the bottom of the post.

PS We're hoping to see them this weekend, and will post photos after that visit.