That's Jack Bauer - Bauer for short.

 

A handsome sweet 15-pound ball of furious tumble-down love.

 

His high-pitched frantic bark echoes through my little bungalow. This guy drives.me.crazy! But oh how I love him. He's aptly named - high-strung, neurotic, tough, but sensitive.

 

I joke that of all the kids, Bauer fared the worst in the divorce. I think it might be true.

 

We had another dog as well, little Simba, a Blue Fawn Chihuahua. Simba lives with my parents now, because he has this amazing connection to my mom, and he was having seizures when I started packing the house to move.

 

The vet said the stress was making him worse.

 

Dogs are sensitive creatures. I've read that they're one of the only animals that can read human expression and decipher the emotions therein. I believe it.

The kids had left for college.

 

Simba was gone.

 

The ex had moved out.

 

It was me and Bauer, sleeping on an inflatable bed for a few days while I finished packing up that big house in the burbs.

 

Bauer ran around the house sniffing the boxes, whimpering and looking at me. I kept explaining it to him as if he could understand.

 

I couldn't take him to the apartment with me - he barks too much, and the deposit was absurdly high. The plan was for him to go to my daughter's bf (Jesse) temporarily until I could take him back.

 

The look he gave me as I put him in Jesse's car, and they drove away...ugh, it was like farming out one of my kids.

 

I cried, even though I knew I would get him back. I just stood in the cul-de-sac and cried, my heart breaking for all of life's tragedies, little and big.

 

I was crying for lots of reasons, to be sure, but that little doggie face was what set me off - the helplessness of the creature at the mercy of uncontrollable forces. He refused to eat, hid under the chair at Jesse's, and bit an uncle who tried to pet him.

 

And look - the dog knows how to sit. He won the sit-and-stay contest at puppy training school for being the dog who would stay the longest.

 

But, he wasn't allowed to play with the other pups in the off-leash playtime.

 

The trainer knew his history (we rescued him) and said he was hopeless to be socialized because he'd been kept in a crate and neglected for the first 12 weeks of his life. When another dog gets in the vicinity, he freaks out, jumps, lunges, and does this wicked screaming thing.

 

I've never heard anything quite like it.

 

Bauer is on Prozac.

 

All of life's messes, divorce, kids going off to school, selling the family home, moving twice in three months...I'm not on Prozac. I've had my moments, of course, but I'm an innately happy person.

 

I'm enjoying this new life.

 

Life is about change - some you can control, some you can't. It's best not to freak out too much about the things you can't control.

 

But, Bauer - Bauer's on Prozac.

 

Thankfully, I got him back within a few months, since I was able to move into a house.

We've been here for over a year now. He's my trusty companion. I walk him every day at least once for 45 minutes, sometimes twice.

And every day I have to deal with his screaming when we walk by another dog. I try to walk early when there aren't as many people and dogs out yet - even before the sun comes up.

It's hard to take pictures because Bauer tugs on the leash when I stop, but I like to grab my camera and get what I can. Hey - if I'm gonna be up that early, I'm going to take advantage of it.

Sunrise is as stunning as sunset.

Spring is so beautiful in the South.

I've always been an avid reader. As a kid growing up in So Cal, I remember reading such glorious things about spring, but I couldn't quite relate, not really sure what the big deal was.

Then, we came to the South.

Wow.

You haven't seen spring until you've lived in the South. I get it now. I get it.

I'm beginning to get a lot of things.