Today six years ago my darling Morphy was born. He was the runt of the litter and no one wanted him. One month after his birth I was given him as a ‘present’ and since then Morpheus and I have had each other. I do have to admit that at the time I did not want a dog. I had just finished my first semester of my third year of college and my great grandmother had recently passed. She was 95 years old. Needless to say, taking care of a puppy and all the responsibilities that it entailed wasn’t what I wanted to get into.
As my mother walked in the house I noticed that my grandmother had a grin on her face-all the alarms went off in my head-run away! Just ten minutes before I had ended a phone conversation with my mother, telling her that I didn’t want the runt that nobody else wanted-I was in college, lived in a small apartment and just didn’t want the burden. But like a lot of things in life, my darling mother didn’t agree with my argument.
As my mother moved to the right, my grandmother stepped forward, with a small black and white pup in the palm of her hand. The moment he looked at me I knew I was doomed. During the rest of my Christmas break I tried to figure out how I could get the dog to listen to me, be on a schedule that I could deal with (feeding and pooping) and what to name him.
Back in 1998 my parents let my brothers and I have our first dog ever. Her name is Cenizas. She is a sweetie pie with us, but very protective of the house and doesn’t warm up to others. Shortly after we brought her home my mother decided that Cenizas was lonely. One day she came home with a blond male puppy, without asking any of us what we thought. We decided to name him Zeus after seeing him defend himself against the much older and bigger Cenizas. Since then all the dogs in our family have been named after a God or Goddess. After Cenizas had a litter with another dog, this time my dad decided to breed her without askingus kids about it, we kept two of the four puppies and named the girl Ishtar and the boy Osiris. Taking into account that the puppy my mother and grandmother had brought me was in fact Zeus’ half brother, I wanted to make sure I gave him a fitting name. On the second day of him being with me I noticed that out of the 24 hours in a day he would sleep a good 22 hours. The other two hours he would use to play, poop and eat. I then named the black puppy Morpheus, after the Greek god of sleep.
Morpheus then began the journey of riding in a car without getting sick. He also learned to poop inside the house in the appropriate spot (my apt didn’t have a yard and I wanted him to learn that if he pooped inside it had to be in a predetermined area), when he was going to be fed, and most importantly, that mommy loves to sleep and waking her up at 5, 6 or 7 am was not going to be tolerated. Morpheus has lived in two college apartments, two graduate school apartments and 4 houses. He has lived in Puerto Rico (where he was born), Arizona and Arkansas. In all of his travels and everyday life he has been a great and well behaved dog. I love him and am glad that he has been with me all these years. Mommy loves you Morphy!
Morpheus in pictures:
As a puppy
During his first snow in 2006
Thanksgiving 2008
Fall 2009
At the park today
Posing with a big leaf
One of his new toys before
New toy after
