It is the night before the Texas Heeler puppy arrives. We canvassed friends and relatives for a name: Otto, Austin, Jasper, Blue, Boo, Calyx. We came up with a few of our own: Buddy, Nixon, Reload, Dog, Rothko, Hank, Trigger, Butter, Buford. Thank you thank you thank you everybody.

In the end we chose Arlo, my brother Michael’s suggestion. Since I have known him he can really be quite pithy in the animal name thing. Because we live in Appalachia where everybody’s self introductions requires two names, we call him Arlo Guthrie.

Word in the holler was that a man called Bill Boone on the other side of the highway has some Texas Heeler puppies for sale for 200 dollars a pup. Bill Boone is known in Madison County. As a younger man he was known for his guitar playing. The farm he lives on goes back to before the Civil War, and he has the crispy grey timber tobacco sheds and antebellum cabin to prove it. There are all kinds of goats everywhere — maybe over 100 — including shaggy dead head lookin Nigerian dwarf. Bill and men like him are Madison County true survivors, clever and industrious enough to find a way to survive the collapse of tobacco farming. And one of those ways is to raise and sell livestock, including pups. Arlo had a very good start in life.

We have constructed an outdoor pen in front of our house. Our otherwise empty living room is now a puppy playpen. We have a lease, a harness, a kennel, food, blankets, training pads and toys. We pick up Arlo in late afternoon when Bill has finished farm chores (or so we imagine.) The sunset is a solid sheet of orange turquoise and navy blue. I am preoccupied with a financial matter that is likely to resolve itself with minimal distress, but the uncertainty stabs my belly. But counteracting that is the joy of Arlo, no doubt disrupting the peace of our life here for a very very very long while.