In Honor of Anne 


We have chosen to give our daughter the middle name of Anne in remembrance and honor of our Anne.

I cannot properly tell of Anne in this venue, but for those that knew her even a little, we only hope they understand a tiny bit of the significance passing on her name has to us.

Someday, down the road, when Cecily is old enough to understand, we will have the pleasure of telling her of our Anne and why we chose to give her the name as part of her own.

We got Anne on June 15, 1998, she was about 11 weeks old. It was our anniversary and my gift to Russ was a 4 hour drive to Kit Karson where he was to find his long awaited addition to our family, a baby basset hound.

There were two females left at this particular home, and no other basset hound puppies available in the paper (you have to understand that on the morning of our anniversary, a Sunday that Russ had to work, I suddenly decided that for our anniversary I wanted to give him the puppy he'd so often spoke of wanting). When we arrived at the home, after getting out of a speeding ticket in the rain and construction filled, non-lit streets of po-dunk Kit Karson, Russ found two little girls waiting to parade in front of him (and pee on him).

One of the female pups was a very dark toned, gentle, good sized pup that seemed to be friendly and mostly interested in going from my lap to his and back, then trotting off to be with her brothers. The other female had less dark fur (though still quite dark), short ears, seemed to think the living room was hers to run, run, run, and then plop, and was only interested in antagonizing the darker furred pup that we were initially drawn to.

Russ finally put the first pup down and patted his lap for the second little girl to come see him. She turned her attention to him and plopped her butt down (10 feet away) and just eyed him. Then, suddenly took off running in circles and a few seconds later had plopped (as only basset hounds can) with her nose between Russ's knees, all 4 legs out straight and huffing. He picked her up to look at her face and she returned his gaze with a smack on the nose with her tongue. And as soon as he set her down she took off running again. Running and plopping, sticking her nose into everything!

I watched Russ and didn't say much; this was his gift, his choice. We weren't even certain we'd be coming home with anyone but we had a box in the back seat and had brought some snacks just in case. It was 9pm and we were 4+ hours from home, 19, and celebrating our first anniversary with essence of puppy filling our noses.

After a few moments he asked to see the first girl again, along with the second. He wanted to see them side by side. I sorta held the first one and a name popped into my head (Sarah) so I told him. He confirmed that she looked like a Sarah (a name he had mentioned he liked - and Bob would have been the name had we found a male). Then he put his eyes back on the wriggling ball of energy in his own hands; she wanted to be let loose to run more. "She doesn't look like a Sarah", he said. "But, I like her."

Of course we indicated to the breeder how adorable both pups were out of polite conversation, but Russ couldn't stop laughing at how out of control the smaller pup of the two was. The only thing that concerned him was a small wound that she had, though healed. It was explained that the mother dog had bitten the umbilical cord too close on this puppy and it resulted in a hernia, which was surgically repaired, but still visible.

AND THEN Russ stood up and the puppy he'd been eying again turned her attention to him, ran over to him and promptly plopped on his foot. At that, he bent over to pick up her and asked me to finalize the deal. She was $300 and he was ready to take her home (though she ended up being $270 because the breeder couldn't find her papers, and she had the imperfection of the hernia issue).

Russ drove home, in the rain, while I slept. The puppy slept in the box in the back seat, peed a couple times, whined and whimpered most of the way home. When we finally arrived back in Lakewood, at around 2am, I took her from the car and set her down to have her follow us up the stairs to our 3rd floor apartment. When we got to the stairs, Russ and I started up and a moment later stopped and turned because our new little puppy wasn't following us. She'd plopped her butt down on the concrete just in front of the first step and just sat there staring at us.

"The steps are too big.. she's too little to go up them!", Russ exclaimed in a loving chuckle as he bent down to carry her up and into her new life. We'd become three and neither of us had any idea at that point what we'd gotten ourselves into.