There is too much to report in a single, monolithic diatribe you most likely don't have time to read in one sitting: no digs and new digs, road trips into mountains, my car woes, a growing family, graduate school for two, Craigslist purchases, to have fish or not to have fish, the evolution of this house, the devolution of my sublet, the democrats, the bakery, the hospital, the Seattle Freeze, cooking triumphs, wildflowers, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, sweet anniversaries, and many more... so, let's just begin with an introduction to the newest inclusion in the Barber-Avanzino household, and no, it's not the Ikea shelf... though the shelf is pretty sweet...
"...with ears that sweep away the morning dew."- Shakespeare on Basset Hounds
"Roll away.... the dew."
- Franklin's Tower, the Grateful Dead on, uh... something else
When we first visited the litter of 6 coon hound/basset hound/labrador pups in Olympia, immediately this mid-sized, brown-streaked-footed one loped into Kelli's lap and fell asleep. Amid the chaos of his brothers and sisters meandering and peeing everywhere, this one seemed content to just stay by our side. When the litter bounded around me, this one alone came to gnaw on my beard. We didn't expect to be chosen like that, but considering the lovely qualities of all the pups including the shy one who liked to hide under the table, we felt like we needed a little help choosing. The window of opportunity to raise a puppy between winter grad school applications and summer grad school beginnings was perfect... but seriously...a puppy? I had had ducks when I was a kid, but... "It takes HOW long to potty-train a basset? Babe... are we uhh... we are are ready, aren't we? Cool, so let's name him. We ARE getting him right? What are you thinking about? Me, too... But wait..."
We rode this wave of excitement for a week, coupled with a slow realization of how quickly we decided to get totally into this, and the following weekend we took one more drive to see if this was for real. They were all much bigger. And after taking The One and his little bundle of potential energy outside, seeing the way his long black body forced his rear half to fishtail like a semi truck on a slippery road when he ran, and after conducting a series of tests on him prescribed by some smiling monks and continually nodding to one another over and over again, we indeed re-upped our yes-ness at the thought of missing out on a rare mix held in one cool dog who loved us, and drove home to prepare the way. And to warn the cats. 
So it came a week later, with Kelli's applications to UW done and mine to WWU nearly complete, and with Franklin's Tower indeed randomly playing on the car tape deck, that we brought Franklin Coal Johnson Barbazino home with us in the chill frost of a January weekend morning. Kelli cooed at him like Diane Fossey to her mountain gorillas and assured him everything would be fine while showing him the world outside Olympia and along the interstate as he lay under a towel watching the drizzle run across the windows. I turned around periodically in disbelief from the driver's seat to look and say, both to myself and outloud, "Holy #@*& we have a dog."The value of our yard immediately shot through the roof as our lives entwined with young Coal's excretion system. The balance of the universe lay in him assuming one of the two positions, to the point that even waking up at 2am to walk him gave us a strange sense of victory. I admit... I didn't help things when I would watch with fatherly pride as he sat there staring coyly into open space or in my direction while he involuntarily created a yellow puddle on the floor, then stepped in it as he turned to sniff it, then ran trailing wet footprints over to me as I came to scold him with a helpless smile on my face. Those were precious times. That's all I'm gonna say about excretion for now. It's an ongoing subject that deserves a good thesis and perhaps a children's book one day.
His first outing that week was to a big puppy play afternoon, where the huge expanse of extra skin behind his neck became the ultimate chew toy for the other puppies. Large or small, Coal met each dog with licking kisses and they all took turns being enamored with him and obsessed with trying to eat him up, literally.
Since then he's become a regular at PetSmart puppy classes where he constantly gets props for being the coolest and most indescribable dog. He's a total hippie, his ears hanging well low off the top of his head like sweet curls, reminiscent of the great tennis star Bjorn Borg in his heyday. See? Yeah, totally. He's just not quite as athletic. Though his legs are longer than the average basset hound, they still kept him in those first weeks from comfortably jumping the 9 inches up onto the deck. So, he just made constant appearances at the edges of everything, teetering on his hind legs as he peered over the couch, chair, garbage can, baby gate and coffee table, whining. In those first nights at our bedside he introduced us to his whine. It's like a sonar to start, with a timbre bordering on microphone feedback, breaking quickly into a downward siren, and this repeats over and over until you speak to him, and then it pauses to allow for the sound of his harrumphing old-man-like breathing, only to begin again if you do not appease him. He wants only to have both of us there and neither of us to ever dare to leave when he is looking. For if one or both of us do leave him, whether it be in the car to go shopping or in the backyard to do the recycling, or (shudder) in his crate so that we can actually go to work, then we get hit with the trademark basset howl, the great extent of his consternation, and the cutest thing you could ever ask to hear.
Before Coal joined our family, Kelli drew up a color-coded daily schedule for us and the pup, and we spent a ton of time in preparation to add him to our own busy lives. We haven't looked at the schedule since that first day. We quickly realized that your life becomes a devotion to him till the puppy is appeased, then you move forward with this new, unexpected version of your life. That's why we call him The One. Our existence is all about offering him food and drink, rearranging the universe to keep our floors clean and his bowels empty, and training him in the language of obedience. We constantly get giddy at the thought of things to put in his mouth other than our clothes and the furniture, and we're delighted with ourselves when he is happy and even more pleased when he poops and pees, wondering what we did wrong when he isn't or he doesn't. But what amazes me is how, in such a short period of time and after all that wonder and trepidation, I have become completely devoted to the well-being and good life of this little lump of Coal. Kelli was right from the start... we really were ready.
So prepare the way for a new little beacon of light emanating from the Treehouse, because the menagerie just grew by a big One. The cats, by the way, let Coal know all the time that they are not dogs. Because even when this little dude becomes a sixty pound hound chasing ducks across Washington, he'll need to remember that cats rule the earth and were born knowing how and where to pee. This is just the Coal intro. Enjoy our stories to come.
