We picked up Zinnia in Connecticut today and brought her home on this very cold day, and I was especially grateful to Lenore Severni, our very competent and conscientious breeder for breeding and bringing us to this remarkable dog.

Zinnia is a testament to Lenore’s decades-long work to create dogs who are healthy and of sound temperament.

She sure scored with Zinnia. She is a great dog. And an important day for me, more than I imagined it would be.

I’ve only known Zinnia for one day, and I believe she has the potential to be a wonderful therapy dog, and an equally wonderful family dog and companion.

She showed no signs of stress, disorientation, confusion or discomfort on her first day without her mother or siblings, or Lenore. She is loving and has all four feet on the ground.

Zinnia rode home in my lap and Maria’s lap, she came home and nestled in her crate easily and comfortably. There was no squirming, fussing or difficulty.

Bedlam Farm is where she will spend much of her time over the next few days and weeks.

She’ll make some appearances – the Mansion, Bishop Maginn – sometime in early or mid-December.  Some people are welcome to stop by the farm and get a peek.

As I write this, she’s sound asleep in her crate, there has yet to be even a whimper. She sat with us in the living room after dinner, flirting with Bud, whose nose she licked, avoiding Fate, who was snarling at her, cuddling with Maria and me, exploring the living room,  and chewing on some puppy toys.

I worked with her for five or ten minutes outside on name recognition, and that is already starting to take hold. It will take another week or so. This is a period of acclimation and very mild and simple training, laying the groundwork rather than asking for a lot.

I’m sure Zinnia will act up plenty when she feels safe and acclimated.

I’m sure she’ll find socks and seaters and sofa legs to chew. She’ll have to learn not to jump on people or put her mouth on anything human. She’ll have to figure out her toys from our possessions.

She must not eat the sofa.

She’ll have some accidents.

A cardinal rule of training Lab puppies is to remember that one day they will be big dogs – 60 or 70 lbs. If  you can’t get them to obey now, you’ll pay later (this reminds me of child-rearing.)

The first challenge for me is to housebreak Zinnia, using a technique I’ve had great success with. She has a crate near the front door. She eats three times a day, each time I put the food in the crate.

Ten to fifteen minutes later I carry her outside (or Maria does) while on a leash. She has already gotten comfortable with her new collar and walks easily on the leash.

She has eliminated outside seven times today, three bowel movements, four urinations.

It’s hard for me to believe, but she seems to be housebroken already. She goes immediately and without hesitation. No accidents of any kind, not in the car, the crate or the house.

She seems to very clearly want to go outside.

For a couple of weeks, I’ve written about my fantasy to bring Zinnia to Bishop Maginn and the Mansion the day after she arrived. Those kids have suffered a lot, and they are very eager to meet her, they’ve even prepared a special corner of their classroom.

I couldn’t wait to bring her to them. But I will.

I hadn’t given it all that much thought, it was one of my many impulses and I lived on impulse for much of my life. I am the king of impulse.

Then, of course, it began a thing online.

The scolds and the busybodies and worriers of the Internet started sounding the alarm. The fact that these people sometimes stumble on being right doesn’t make them any less obnoxious, alas.

Intellectual privacy and free thought are sacred to me, they are forever deviled by the people I call Strangers Without Boundaries.

The refugee kids there have melted my heart, begging me to bring Zinnia. They wanted so much for me to bring her to them. I wanted to see the smiles on their faces when they see her, and I will.

Just not this week.

It doesn’t make sense, of course, to do all of that so quickly.

For one thing, I have a lot of work to do with Zinnia here. For another, I have to reassemble my computing life and also recover from eye surgery on Monday. I have to say there is no sign of stress in this dog – she is a lot calmer than I am, but that is beside the point.

Lenore also urged me to wait a couple of weeks to socialize her in our Zinnia talks. So Zinnia could adapt to her new life and get stronger and more settled. I listen to breeders and vets and do what they say.

I will always take advice from someone like Lenore, who knows what she is talking about, and from my wonderful vet, Suzanne Fariello, who spent six years in vet school,  rather than from so many of the people who live to tell strangers what to do online.

I count on people like them – and Maria –  to keep me on the right path, since I have so often fall off of it. There is no shame in admitting what you need, and I need good advice from people I trust.

I do not trust the advice of strangers on computers who tell me what to write and do.

This is a prejudice I know, but perhaps a righteous one.

I will confess to having a devilish streak in me – I do sometimes like to thumb my nose and taunt people who tell me what to do, even when I suspect they are right,  a bad habit I should try to shed –  maybe.

The problem with “these people,” as someone on my blog called them, is that they never believe anyone can or will come to a good decision on their own, and without their intrusions.

As Henry David Thoreau preached so eloquently, coming to the right decision on one’s own is so important to human dignity. I’m with him.

“These people,” are a kind of poisonous distraction from a free and moral mind. In recent history, busybodies and scolds were placed in the stock and people could throw tomatoes at them. In our world, they have smartphones and computers and are celebrated for running amok.

When something controversial pops up – as it so often does in my life – I make sure to get the advice I can trust from people who are qualified to give it. And I am never afraid to change my mind, or admit that I was wrong – and all by myself, without the help of strangers without boundaries.

Lenore showed me some of the vicious and dishonest messages she has been getting about me – two or three – from people warning her that I murder dogs and exploit them for money.

I thank her for dismissing them, and for her faith in me. I know they were upsetting for her to receive.

I can’t speak for Lenore, but I know she makes up her own mind, as do I. My view of meddlers, hate-peddlers, the faux righteous,  and busybodies online – they are a pestilence, a challenge both to the truth, privacy, and individuality.

I am proud and happy to see that these broken and hateful messengers failed once again, and when they fail, truth and compassion wins one more small victory.

In any case, Lenore urged me to be patient with Zinnia’s socializing and she was, of course, correct. It couldn’t hurt to wait, isn’t that what maturity is all about.

Lenore and I have some different ideas about the frailty of puppies – it really depends on the dog, I think. But there is no argument with her, it is her call.

I have great respect for her and will absolutely heed her wishes.

I am very happy to have Zinnia.

At a quick glance, she is very much the dog I have wanted to have, the dog who can follow in Red’s heels as a therapy dog for hospice patients and those in assisted living.

As we rode home with Zinnia on my lap for much the way, Maria looked at us and smiled, and she asked me what I was feeling. It just came out, something personal,  as I stroked Zinnia’s belly: “I need this dog,” I said