If We Travel With Her, It's Called 'Tessering'

Well, we’ve added another girl to the household. Poor Jack, he’s so out-numbered. We picked up Tessa on Saturday from the North Country Animal Shelter. The week before, Patricia, Brigid and I went to Malone because they have a JoAnn Fabric’s store, and we were at the lake anyway (It’s only 20 minutes from the lake). We were on a Halloween costume mission, but on the spur of the moment, we went to the animal shelter. We’ve been talking about getting another dog for a while now. We wanted to wait a reasonable amount of time for Brigid to get big enough. Something must have been telling me to go, because among the many dogs they had to choose from, this very docile, beautiful chocolate lab with German shepherd mix was there. She was beautiful and had a temperament to match. I didn’t want to take her that day because I wanted to confer with Jack. When we got back to the lake, he said, “Why didn’t you just get her?” Figures.


Anyway, we were going to be back at the lake on Saturday, so I called the shelter to let them know we would be by, and we were still interested in the dog. She had been there for a whole year. I asked why, and the woman said people just walked by her. I think it’s because she was waiting for us. They called her “Tessie,” but we changed it to Tessa. Jack says it’s after a tesseract, a wrinkle in time, which, of course, is the name of the book where we were first introduced to the term. The rest of us just think Tessa sounds better than Tessie. Regardless, she seems like she’s been part of the family all along. When the girls and I picked her up, she was a little excited but when she got in the car, she laid down on the seat like she had always done so. She came into the house like she owned it and laid down on her blanket like that is where she always was. Brigid is happy that “she licks you,” Brigid’s way of saying “she licked me.” Brigid has already dubbed her “Brigid’s Tessa.”

So far, she is very docile around the baby, although we are not leaving them alone together, and she is very interested in the cat, who is less interested in the dog. We hope they’ll strike an accord soon. This morning, they seemed to be making progress. What the dog hasn’t done is all-out attack the cat. I think she’s just curious. She’s also young – probably two and a half. The one thing we haven’t heard is her bark. Not once. She just seems serene.


Other than having another mouth to feed, the only thing that this does to the status quo in the household is pose a different type of challenge for me: Now I have to come up with a new idea for our Christmas card.