Some of you have inquired about the significance of the images of the basset hound on my pages, as well as our new daughter's name. We chose 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 know they understand the significance of passing on her name. 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 wife's gift was a 4 hour drive to Kit Karson where I was to find my 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 I had to work, Angie suddenly decided that for our anniversary she wanted to give me the puppy I'd so often spoke of wanting). When we arrived at the home where the puppies were, after getting out of a speeding ticket in the rain and construction filled, non-lit streets of po-dunk Kit Karson, I found two little puppy girls waiting to parade in front of me (and pee on me). One of the female pups was a very dark toned, gentle, & a good sized pup that seemed to be friendly & mostly interested in going from my lap to Angie's 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. I finally put the first pup down and patted my lap for the second little girl to come see me. She turned her attention to me, plopped her butt down (10 feet away), and just eyed me. Then, suddenly took off running in circles and a few seconds later had plopped (as only basset hounds can) with her nose between my knees, all 4 legs out straight and huffing. I picked her up to look at her face and she returned my gaze with a smack on my nose with her tongue. And as soon as I set her down she took off running again. Running and plopping, sticking her nose into everything! We weren't certain we'd be coming home with anyone that night but we had a box in the back seat & had brought snacks just in case. It was 9pm, we were 4+ hours from home, 19, and celebrating our first anniversary with essence of puppy filling our noses. I watched the wriggling ball of energy in my hands; she wanted to be let loose to run more. "She doesn't look like a Sarah", I said. "But, I like her." (Sarah was the name we'd intended to name whichever pup I chose.) AND THEN Angie stood up and the puppy I'd been eying again turned her attention to me, ran over to me and promptly plopped on my foot. At that, I bent over to pick her up and asked Angie to finalize the deal. I was ready to take her home. I drove home, in the rain, while Angie slept. The puppy slept in the box in the back seat, peed a couple times, and 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, Angie 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!" I bent down to carry her up and into her new home. We'd become three and neither of us had any idea at that point what we'd gotten ourselves into.

Our daughter was born on Oct 18. I now have an entirely new reason to write.

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