a rite of passage

My little sack of potatoes managed to situate himself just so in my lap while we we had the sofa to ourselves yesterday evening, so that both my arms looked like they were playing Twister with my precariously placed laptop, and I felt like I was working in the confines of 2x2 cubbyhole. No matter how I moved the little kielbasa, there he was, coming back to fill nooks and crannies like hot, flowing lava.

In all fairness to Baxter, I'm not usually surfing the internet during the hours when our pack watches TV, during the time when he is invited onto the sofa and usually ends up in my lap. A symbiotic relationship, really, especially in winter when we all could use the extra warmth. But yesterday, I had the bug to google and needed my lap for my laptop. Yeah, they call it that for a reason, I told Baxter in my head, though a sleeping sack of potatoes doesn't seem to care much proper terminology.

The thing was, I was googling for him. Planning ahead, for the day less than two years from now when my boy becomes a man..dog. Planning, for the milestone that I've blasphemously pegged as Baxter's Woof Mitzvah, the time in his life when he turns five years old, and, like his brothers before him, is entitled to shed nylon collar of his youth and can don the rolled leather collar of adulthood.

Yep, that's right. Rolled leather collar of adulthood. Or more specifically in Baxter's case, forest green rolled leather collar of adulthood. To last a lifetime, like the lifelong commitment we made when we adopted him. Woof Mitzvah. Five years old. What, dogs can't have milestones, too?

Now, finding leather collars is easy. Finding well made rolled leather collars? Still pretty easy. But finding a well made dark green rolled leather collar in Baxter's size? That was source of my googlitis, the reason why I was willing to put up with my elephant man-ly contortions while sleeping beauty dozed away. The less I found, the more determined I became to find the goods.

So far, I've found only one supplier that fits the bill, a master saddler of the Royal Mews in the UK that also happens to make custom rolled leather collars, and offers it in the very chipper Baxter green I was looking for. Part of me yikes at the thought of such extravagance, but most of me is very intrigued by what is sure to be a fine piece of work for our fine piece of work. After all, it's for his Woof Mitzvah.