We are pondering a last-minute name change for Leroy, since he hasn’t really been called much of anything yet.

Anne Davis posted a message on Maria’s Facebook page the other day. “I feel way too sorry for him,” she said. “Way too much will be expected of such a young puppy,” she declared.

I was uncharacteristically speechless when she told me this, although we both did start to laugh as the dog pens, crates, treats, puppy training, special puppy food and chew sticks and balls began to pile up in the house.

Really, Anne? Sorry for Gus? Perhaps Anne ought to read the news or visit her local animal shelter.

Will we be helicopter puppy parents? Push him towards Yale or Harvard? Perhaps we ought to start saving for guitar lessons.

We do expect a great deal of him. We expect him to be happy, healthy and much loved. It’s tough to be a puppy in Maria’s house. Wish I could try it.

Maria and I had a fierce and brief fight this morning,  a kind of gender fight, I think, because I want to hire someone to patch a gaping hole in our roof where a bird had a nest last year.  Snow and rain comes right into the hole.

Maria says no, no way, there might be babies in there. I said the hole is growing and every time it rains, the roof is rotting and we do not have thousands of dollars to repair a roof at the moment.  It doesn’t matter, she said, wait till winter.

I thought she was going to throw me out of the car. We took some time off, but this argument will resume. I did wonder at someone feeling sorry for our puppy.

Sometimes these kinds of  Facebook messages make you laugh, sometimes you want to cry. Really Anne, replied Maria, there are so many people and animals on the earth to worry about, why not worry about one of them? What is sad, I suppose,  is when people lose their perspective. I am still getting messages from people telling me it is cruel to take a puppy home after eight weeks, they need more time, 10 weeks,  a few months, even a year.

I encourage the senders to mind their own business, but on social media, that is literally like taking a pea to an onrushing tank.

We are thinking a lot about Leroy as the time draws near for him to come home to us – a week from Friday, to be exact.  Friday, we are going to find a good pet store and buy more supplies, we want to be ready.

This morning, we returned from a one night visit to Brattleboro, Vt. to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary. We talked about the puppy much of the way there and back.

Driving through the beautiful green mountains, we started talking about the puppy’s name. As a border collie owner, I always give the border collies a single-syllable name,  it is quicker to say when shouting commands in the field.  Our other dogs, Frieda, Lenore, had two syllables.

I started thinking about Leroy’s name and another name popped into my head: Gus. Leroy might be a Gus, I said to Maria, and we both started saying the name out loud. Maria was the first one to say, “he’s a Gus. That’s just who he is. It’s a nice smushy name, just like his face.” I said I liked it because it was an old-fashioned, working class kind of name, a no-nonsense name, and it seemed to me that Leroy was a Gus, that was just the way it seemed. He seems a gentleman to me.

So we both agreed to think on it for a day or so. I called Robin Gibbons the breeder and asked her what she thought of “Gus,” and she said she liked it fine, it was up to us. “He’s your dog,” she said. I told her she wouldn’t last long on Facebook.

So we are leaning that way. More tomorrow.

I hope Anne feels better. I’m a little worried about her.