So Little Bit traded up, moving from a crowded kennel and the converted barrel in which she slept to a giant suburban home with doting parents. It was February 2020, just before we were all locked down and separated from family and friends. Little Bit’s arrival was fortuitous. Who knows what our mental health during Covid would have been like without her?

Despite the several dog beds scattered around our home, she set her eyes on ours as her preferred sleeping spot. At first she’d wait for an invitation, her snout and front paws perched on the bedspread. But a few weeks in she realized she was queen of the house and began jumping up into her rightful place in the middle where both her subjects could scratch and rub her.

Little Bit loved long walks, especially at the ranch where she’d match each of our miles with two or three of her own, zigging and zagging over hills and pastures. She wouldn’t get into our pristine swimming pool but jumped enthusiastically into every scum-covered cattle trough.