While my daughter sits patiently in the orthodontist chair nervously anticipating the new braces that are bout to be glued to her teeth, I'm filling my hour long wait in the lobby recollecting that today is the first year anniversary that my best friend Ayla passed away. Fifteen years ago my wife Ann and I moved into Lolomi lodge at the James Reserve to begin our new life together, a new career for me with University of California, and both of us feeling the need to nurture another life. All though we intended to let nature provide us with a baby at her earliest convenience, the quickest way to begin a new family was to spread the word that we wanted a new puppy!

By early September we got word from a friend that Art and Irene Jaenke out at Trails End had a brand new litter of Queensland heeler pups whose mother was unable to suckle due to lack of milk. The two week old pups needed new homes fast, the price was right (free), and we both thought the breed would be a good one to face the wilderness-like conditions at the James Reserve. With pick of the litter, we choose a spunky little tri-colored female who had asymmetrical floppy ears, one standing up and the other bent down, a quick alert look, and the curiosity to run right over to us and begin chewing on our fingers while her stub of a docked tail wagged about a hundred oscillations a minute. We brought the little 2 week old waif home and started her eating a early puppy formula, although she quickly convinced us she preferred fresh meat, leather slippers, and a fresh ankle!. I was reading Jean Auel's first novel "The Clan of the Cave Bear," at that time, and the book's heroine Ayla, an orphan Homo sapien girl raised by Neanderthal people, seemed to be an appropriate name for this new little addition to our wilderness home.

[Note: This essay appears to be an incomplete draft]