Welcome Dog Days of Summer

NY Dog Days. Think hot, sweaty, and sluggish weeks following the solstice, iced tea and fans, sunscreen, sleeveless shirts, perhaps an escape into an air-conditioned movie. Already, in the last week of June, we are reaching 88 degrees.
But this summer the expression takes on new meaning for me. Yesterday my daughter (a graduate student living out-of-state) arrived home with her Yin and Yang, little Day-ay and her son, Ragazzo, for a five-week stay.

The mama, Day-ay, the smaller Yorkie mix (pictured, right), is all of seven pounds; her son Ragazzo, the dark-faced handsome dog whose paternal pedigree is harder to pin down, is 12 pounds.

Day-ay’s Origin

In November 2013, my daughter and her boyfriend found the little Yorkie wandering on Native-American-owned land outside of Albuquerque. They put up advertisements and photos, and let the community know via word-of-mouth and online, but nobody came forward to claim the dog. By Christmastime, they had decided to keep her; by New Years 2014, they suspected (correctly) that she was pregnant.
Day-ay, little as she was, gave birth in late January 2014 to five puppies. Two of the five are now nearly twice her size, leading us to believe that her litter may have had two different fathers (this is possible among dogs).
Having been dogless since 2012 when my second, Jackie, passed away, I am looking forward to my own “Dog Days” of summer. Let’s see how the little ones adapt to the amplitude of odors that New York City sidewalks have to offer.

Note: Day-ay means “little fox” in Tewa, the language of Pueblo tribes.

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