Chariclo is six!!

Chariclo had chemo treatment #13 of 17 yesterday and everything was great... Exam, bloodwork, attitude.  And today she has the pleasure of turning SIX years old.  Which is not nearly old enough to be going through stage V lymphoma, but perhaps you don't call it that any more if she is mostly in remission.  And perhaps she is doing so well because she IS a younger dog.  Next week is a skip week, and the week after that she will have chest x-rays as well as treatment #14.  I'm looking forward to seeing those x-rays.

I took this picture last weekend—she has a wooly bear caterpillar on her head.  So on the occasion of her birthday, I will tell you the story of her name.  When I first learned how sick she really was, one of my first thoughts related to her name and how I would so, SO miss saying it someday and damn John for doing such a good job naming her.

We were puppy hunting and had managed to get on the list for a litter of puppies that would be the I litter.  Oftentimes litters are named in alphabetical order so a puppy from a breeder's first litter would be Starstruck's Alphabet Soup (called "Noodle") and a puppy from the second litter would be Starstruck's Beetlejuice (called "Day-O").  I just made those up.  So this was the I litter.  We have named our dogs after astronomers from Tycho, Galileo and Ptolemy to Bernoulli, Toscanelli and Amanda.  We found an astronomer named Robert Innes, born in Scotland, who eventually established an observatory in South Africa.  There, he discovered the star nearest our sun called Proxima Centauri.  That star is part of the centaur constellation.  And the centaur is called Chiron.  And Chiron?  Well, he married a nymph named... Chariclo.

Now in the end, we didn't get a puppy from that I litter but instead got a puppy from another breeder's S litter.  And based on the weather we drove in to collect that puppy, she should have been called Backcountry's Slip Sliding Away or Backcountry's Snow and Ice, but she is registered as Backcountry's Seeing Stars.

When we were first introducing little Chariclo to the world people wondered what we would call her for short, but there is NO short — you quickly say the first two syllables and sing out the third:[Kare-i-KLO!]. The nearly-17-year-old can say it in one as he invites her front paws up onto his chest for a hug.