Origin Story

Molly-the-dog was our little Jack Russell terrier. We had her in our lives from six weeks after her birth on August 16, 1995 to the day we put her to sleep on November 19, 2011.

This blog is my memory of her and the sixteen years she shared with us.

The idea of having a dog had been in my head since I was a kid. We had dogs - dachshunds - from around the time I was six to the time my parents died many years later.  

But, when I was a young adult living with the other young adult - Bruce - I'd hooked up with early on, life was too uncertain, living arrangements too temporary, to think about having a dog.

This is not to say I didn't have the conversation with Bruce, many times, about having a child together - or, failing that, a dog.

Then I made the decision, late in the 80's, that if I wasn't going to have kids, then I could go to law school, which I did, from 1990-1993. I served my articles at a legal aid clinic dedicated to environmental law, wrote the bar admission course and... after that, descended into a well of underemployment, loneliness and dreadful uncertainty.  There wasn't a lot of work for baby environmental lawyers then (or now for that matter).

But, I had a few clients, one of whom ran a kennel where she raised, among other breeds, Jack Russell terriers. Only half-joking one day, I told my client I'd take a puppy in lieu of one month's billing.

And so we came to have our little dog. Molly was the last-born and the runt of the litter of four, born to Maggie and Chief.

We picked her up on September 30, 1995.  Here's her first baby picture.

Click here for the next instalment of Molly's story.