My Jack Russell, Blitzen, was born on Christmas 1997, a few weeks before my grandmother died, and before the ice storm of 1998. According to the coffee table book The Ice Storm, this was "the most destructive weather disaster in Canada's recorded history." Which is saying a lot, because we have some pretty crappy weather up here.

We had to cancel my grandmother's visitation. She was never much of a party person, but I felt bad for her. She'd always taken a back seat to my gregarious grandfather. Since his death a few years before, she'd kind of blossomed, her bone dry wit getting a bit more of an audience at family gatherings.

Before her death, she got really angry. She didn't want to die in a hospital, but none of her three sons were able to take the time off work to do a death watch. I remember in the hospital, however, she did have one happy moment. She had asked them to cut her hair, which had always been long, though she wore it in a bun. For the only time in her 90 years it was shoulder length, and she liked it.

When the ice storm hit, the trees were so heavy with ice, 50 year old maples were drooping with the weight. I went for a walk the morning of her funeral and all the trees looked like angry old, long haired women. Yeah, she was pissed. I walked along empty streets. I saw a car crushed under the weight of a fallen limb. A German Shepherd leapt out of nowhere and bit me. It was like Mad Max in a snow globe.

Meanwhile somewhere up North, Hydro Electric pylons had wilted under the pressure. The power went out in our West End neighborhood for two weeks (and for over a month in other parts of Quebec.) Except for one block, which never lost power once during the whole disaster. That's where my puppy was living.

I had met her mother, Rudy, a few months before in the park, while I was walking my parent's epileptic, and possibly psychotic beagle. Rudy was kind of a scrawny, long haired Jack. Not a pretty dog, but she had the gentlest eyes. When her owner told me she was pregnant I put my name immediately on the waiting list. I'd never owned a dog before, but I got this gut feeling that I would never get a chance at a better dog. My parents had always found our family dogs at the dog shelter and this last one had not turned out so well (granted they had found him at a shelter in Kennebunkport. I've always been convinced that he'd been dropped off there by the Bush family.)

I visited the puppies about a week after Christmas, and struggled with my decision. The father, it turns out, was a haughty Hollywood calibre stud. You could already tell three out of four of these puppies could go straight into lucrative ad campaigns. They had the eye patches, the crazy quilt ears, the whole Jack Russell package. But I had temperament concerns. I'd done some reading over at the Jack Russell rescue website, and I did not want a dog who was going to eat himself through one side of my couch to the other.

So I decided to wait until the puppies had a bit more character before deciding.

I was scared to call during the storm. They were so small, I had visions of them freezing overnight into little balls of fur. I didn't know they were living in the miracle grid. Then I got the call that I could come and see them. Like I said, three of those puppies were beautiful, but fresh hell. And one was the spitting image of her mother.

In eleven years, I've never regretted my choice.