Zinnia met Dr. Fariello today at Cambridge Valley Vets. Suzanne said Zinnia was perfect, a “beautiful dog,” and she loved her very calm and grounded manner. That ends the process through which Zinnia was bought.

This exam is required in the breeding contract before the sale of the dog becomes final.

She’s ours now, and we are delighted to have her. We had her microchipped and she got her first Lyme shot. More shots to come.

Suzanne said she likes to recommend that puppies stay away from groups of people for between 14 and 16 weeks. That’s not going to happen, I said.

She laughed. “I know,” she said, “she’ll be fine.” When Dr. Fariello is worried about something, it isn’t fine. I’m going to be thoughtful and careful about Zinnia, but I want her to begin to live her life in a few weeks.

It was a good day for Zinnia.

So far, she is housebroken, but we don’t take it for granted yet. My idea is to not give her a chance to do anything but succeed. If dogs have no choice, they succeed.

She’ll be mostly crate bound (we take her out for exercise four or five times a day and sit and play with her outside the crate if we are close by) until we are sure the housebreaking is a given.

She’s a bit too young for declare victory, she doesn’t even have full bladder control. But she certainly wants to go outside.

She’s doing beautifully. No accidents, some shrieking in the daytime when she wants to hang out with the dogs.

She loves Bud, but Fate is not buying Zinnia, not yet. She snarls and barks whenever Zinnia gets too close.

Fate doesn’t give it away, we let dogs be dogs.

They will work it out. She definitely knows her name now and she is beginning to figure out the “sit” command. I’m not pushing training yet, she needs to be at least a month older before I ramp things up. But by the end of the week she’ll know her name – a critical element of training – and mostly sit when asked.

We are delighted to have a dog like this, I can’t wait to get her over to the Mansion so that the residents can see her and so she can meet the students at Bishop Maginn, who are waiting so patiently to meet her.

One person e-mailed me and said, “it will be good for the students to wait, young people are so spoiled today.” These children are not spoiled in any sense of the word.

It’s been a good week so far – I have my computer back, another potentially wonderful dog has entered my life. And then, life makes itself known – two dead sheep in a couple of weeks, Zelda and Izzy. Two new sheep, Asher and Issachar. The wheel turns and turns.