Un coup de foudre ! (Love at first sight)

One summer day in 1995 while living in the States, I was invited to a friend’s house to go swimming. However, I chose to stay poolside, since I don’t really like the water. All of a sudden, there appeared a scruffy-faced, tiny puppy with a (large for his size) tennis ball in his mouth, which he immediately dropped at my feet and looked at me with eyes that questioned — Well, aren’t you going to throw it for me? How could I resist, and how fast he could run – like lightning – he even managed to get me to jump into the pool, after he dropped the ball onto the water and stood wavering at the edge as if he were about to fall in going after it!

As it turned out, my friends owned his mother, a Jack Russell named “Mischief”, who (as I later learned) enjoyed burrowing, in usual terrier fashion, herself and her offspring under blankets and towels placed in her bed, before going to sleep. Little did I know just how much this behavior would turn out to be so important and beneficial in the future, when traveling abroad.

I also learned that the puppy was named “Bullet” – but not only because of his speed in retrieving tennis balls – oh no, this little puppy was indeed special! The sire’s registered name was “Son of a gun” and so, “Mischief” gave birth to a litter of one – the result of a single ‘bullet,’ so to speak!