Free at last!

Monday 15 January 2007

Today Perry came home and I saw my first comet. Not a bad day, really.

For those of you who have worried: Perry got off of the plane and was completely unphased by the entire experience. He seemed genuinely happy to see each of us, and was also just entirely Perrylike. He sniffed around, ran in and out of the house, sat down on the sofa, snuffled the shells. We took him for a walk up the beach and discovered that a) he’s a little afraid of the water b) he has no taste and thus drinks the saltwater and c) he (and we) didn’t know it at the time, but salt water really doesn’t agree with him.

When we got home, we put him on the back porch, where he mournfully looked in the widow as though being on the back porch for 15 minutes was a terrible fate (this from a dog who has been at a kennel for 30 days!). When he got back inside, he collapsed in his regular place—within 3 feet of wherever we are and uncannily in front of wherever we might need to be next.

All night we have been joking about the terrible psychological damage we've done to this dog. We expected some kind--any kind--of change in his personality after his ordeal (god knows there's a change in MY personality after MY move). But there's nothing. He is utterly and completely Perry. He wanders around the house as though he's always lived here, happily roams in and out the usually-opened french doors, and wags his tail with delight whenever anyone comes near him as he's sleeping in the sun. We'll have to figure out how to keep him from drinking the salt water, but that is likely to be our biggest transition issue.

Tonight we went down to the beach at sunset, as we always do. But tonight the main event was not the sunset but just afterwards, when we searched the horizon for the comet I had heard about on the radio this morning. There were clouds on the horizon, and we seriously doubted that we’d be able to see the comet which was to show up just above the horizon at sunset. So Aidan and Naomi and her friend Jessica (who’s spending the night) all built sandcastles while the sky darkened. And then, there it was, a slash of light in the cloud break, slowly creeping along the sky. In and out of the clouds it went until finally it disappeared for the night. We’ll try again tomorrow, when it’ll be farther up in the sky and longer after sunset. We think it’s totally appropriate that the long-awaited arrival of the largest, curliest, and most spectacular dog of all should be heralded by a cosmic event.

(Pictures, top to bottom: Perry at Wellington Airport, his ENORMOUS crate behind him; Perry, Naomi, and Jessica at the beach; the horizon on which, I am sorry to say, this picture does not show a comet, and Aidan blowing out the candle on his half birthday cake)