Apologies for the long blog silence. It’s attributable (in keeping with the alliteration of the title of this poste) to Peru and a puppy. First, Peru: I was hiking in Peru for a week and mostly away from the internet. Second, the puppy: the day after returning from Peru, we adopted an adorable puppy named Zoë. And then two days later I had a gig in Brooklyn. They tell you, especially when becoming family to a rescue puppy, to adopt a consistent schedule immediately, to get her used to your routine. I’m pretty sure they don’t mean that you should stick the puppy you’ve only had for forty-eight hours into a car to drive four and a half hours (six on the way back!) and then make her sit through a concert. But she was absolutely amazing. She’s better in the car than I am, and she was content to be held on laps during the show. I suppose, to the extent that my routine involves lots of change, this wasn’t too bad a start. It was more work than the last paragraph suggests (mostly because she was still working on house training; she’d figured out that she was supposed to go to the bathroom in our back yard, but nothing in Brooklyn was familiar, so there was a lot of walking around outside in the rain trying to make sure she didn’t do anything inside that she wasn’t supposed to). But for me having a puppy means that she’s part of my pack – she comes along almost everywhere and so needs to be adaptable and a good traveler. In that way it was excellent training for what’s to come – and it helps that she charmed everyone along the way. She isn’t allowed everywhere, though, and the biggest puppy difficulties at the moment involve music. I was hosting (and thus responsible for getting there early, setting up the sound system, sticking around afterward to break it all down) a new songwriter showcase this past Friday. The venue is a café, so dogs were not allowed, and it meant I had to leave her alone for longer than she’d been left before. Both because the housetraining is not yet complete and even more because she’s at that puppy teething stage of wanting to chew on everything, that means leaving her in a crate. Which she doesn’t love. Truth be told, I think it’s less about the crate than being left alone or left out. That’s probably a universal concern, and perhaps even more so for a puppy who was found on the street and then rotated through a series of foster homes. I’m learning that I have to make the crate (or leaving her more generally) just a part of our routine. I’m lucky that I can bring my dog along on most of the things I do in my daily life, but there are always going to be places and events where she isn’t invited. So just like she needs to be able to tolerate long car rides, she needs to be able to cope with being left alone. And right now almost all the things she is getting left for involve music. I think we’re both adjusting. For the moment I’m probably not going to be seeing quite as many concerts as I otherwise would, so that I don’t have to leave her alone that often. But I’m playing a bunch (next up: Pennsylvania; need to figure out if she can come along for that show) and have tickets to see others, so we’ll continue to work on both aspects of puppy training: being left alone and being brought along for music events.