Nova

Meet Nova. Chihuahuas have a way of multiplying, and not in the traditional sense. More in a ‘I just looked away for a second, and now there are two!’ way. Ever since I fostered Greta at the beginning of the year, I’ve been thinking about how nice it would be for Henny to have a playmate. She’s really warmed up to other dogs, but it’s hard to play with somebody who’s seven times your size, and that’s how big most of the dogs we know are.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for the right chihuahua puppy, and Nova (named thus by me) came up on the Humane Society’s site recently. I didn’t think she was likely to be the right dog, but I thought I would ‘just go look’ today. Putting the pet carrier in the car ahead of time was probably my first mistake. From the second I held Nova, I knew I wasn’t going home without her.

As much as I’ve loved seeing Henny transform over the past couple of years, I’m not sure I want to go through that again. Well, I would, maybe someday, but I really wanted the experience of having a ‘real’ dog — and a puppy, at that. I haven’t had a puppy since I was thirteen. Nova is a complete lap dog; as scared as Henny was of physical contact in the beginning, that’s how much Nova craves it.

She’s spent most of the day tearing around, accosting Henny (who will warm up to Nova, I know, but for now she’s wary), and chewing on rawhides. I forgot that puppies chew so much! She’s agile and fearless, and it’s funny to see her do the things that I’ve seen chihuahuas do only in photos before. Like clambering over everything to walk along the back of the sofa. She’s also a blanket burrower. I threw the corner of a blanket over her, thinking she’d attack it (she was in full-on crazy mode), and instead she lay down and fell asleep.

Getting Birdy when she was a kitten was a lot more work than getting Beany as a mostly-adult, but I look back at the photos now and remember how cute and funny she was. A puppy’s going to be an even bigger adjustment, but sometimes Nova stops moving, and sometimes when she does that, she’s curled up on my stomach. Worth it.