Our Dog Copernicus Celebrates Birthday #10

Dear Candace:

     Please tell Alice and the boys that Copernicus is making 10 years today! He's an amazing little man. He was conceived in Argentina in a poor slum. His father was a cute little dog about Alice' size named Virgilio. His mother Eloisa had to stay with a friend of Elena's while we found a house where we could have a pet. Eloisa had one litter of puppies. The husband of Elena's friend drowned the puppies because they did not have the money to feed them. (To this day it makes me mad to think about such a thing. We could have sent them money for food.) Eloisa recovered from that loss and got pregnant again with little Virgilio. Elena came down to Argentina to pick her up after the 9-11 attack. It was a huge hassle and cost $800.00. We wanted to bring Virgilio also. But he had disappeared. 

      Eloisa flew from Buenos Aires to Miami and then onto San Francisco. She spent some 24 hours in a crate. She was relieved to see us when we picked up the crate. I had to go over to customs and present her full shot record to get her admitted to the USA. I got a nice man in customs who looked at the papers for a second, smiled and stamped everything approved. When Eloisa got to the car, her nose went high into the air. She knew that she was in a strange and different place.

     We soon discovered that Eloisa was pregnant. She went into labor after dinner when Khossrow Assadi was staying with us. Copernicus was the first born. As a young puppy he was very sweet. He would spend long hours at night looking up at the sky and stars. It reminded us of the astronomer Nicholas Copernicus. We named him Copernicus.

    He has been our loving companion and guard dog for the last ten years. He is also a man who has been in many fights with other animals and has bitten several humans. He has attacked large trucks and gone on marathon escapes that lasted for hours. He has never suffered a major injury.

      I would use the saying from the Rocky movies that described Sylvester Stallone (Rocky):

"His whole life was a million to one shot!"