She came in frowning.
That was March 8th.
A miniature schnauzer puppy with one white left paw, eight weeks old, was carried through my front door with absolutely no intention of being told what to do.
I did not plan to write about her. I planned to raise her. She’s our 3rd miniature schnauzer.
But something happens when you spend your days with a creature who approaches every single moment like it is the most important thing that has ever occurred. The mail truck. A pinecone. A leaf that blew the wrong direction. She had opinions about all of it, and somewhere in those first weeks I started writing them down.
Just a few lines at first.
Then a few more.
Two hundred and six days later and a few more, Annie Grace has her own voice, her own following, and two published books. She tells her stories in first person because she insisted, and I have learned not to argue with her. She also has a new Christmas picture book coming out soon.
Readers have followed her on Facebook through a spay surgery and the long uncomfortable night that came after.
Through a bear-naming contest that drew 278 votes. Through a locust she put in her mouth and immediately regretted. Through a stolen Croc, a panic attack on a groomer’s ramp, and one memorable incident involving a wad of grass and a freshly swept kitchen floor.
They have met Max, the six-year-old long-haired Chihuahua who was here first and has never fully recovered from her arrival. They have met Gerald the squirrel, who lives on the fence line.
They watched her try out for football and not make the team, not the A team, not the B team, not even water girl.
They watched her form her own team instead, and what I did not expect was the mail.
A woman in another state who lost her schnauzer last year sewed Annie Grace’s photographs into a quilt and sent it to us through her sonin- law, who happened to go to high school with my son in Montana and happened to be driving through town.
Someone else mailed pink blankets, one for Annie Grace, one for me. Someone in Kansas made a diamond art portrait of her book cover, bead by bead, and mailed it to a dog she has never met.
Annie Grace licked the glass. It was the only response she had besides smiling when I snapped her photo on my phone.
Here is what I have learned writing two hundred days of a puppy’s life: The small things are not small. A kiddie pool costs ten dollars and has produced more joy in this house than almost anything I have purchased in twenty years. A towel at 1 a.m. is a love language.
A curly brown pecan leaf, carried carefully across a yard and dropped in front of a grumpy old Chihuahua, is a gift worth writing about.
She has taught me that showing up matters more than getting it right. That healing happens faster when someone wraps you in a pink blanket.
That the person who waits at the window when you leave is telling you something about themselves, and about you.
And she has taught me that joy is loud. Joy knocks things over. Joy tracks dirt across a clean floor and does not apologize.
Annie Grace still frowns sometimes. She still gets her head caught in the blinds. She still cannot pass a pinecone without comment.
If you want to follow along, she posts on my Facebook page most days. Come meet her.
She will be the one covered in grass with her left paw forward, telling you exactly what she thinks.
And no, I don’t write them. She does. I just type. Her paws would hit too many keys at once if I let her.
Pam Kumpe
