Welcome home Shilah! Meet the sweet pup we adopted from Association Pas Si Bête, a nearby refuge center which specializes in very difficult-to-handle dogs, such as wolf dogs like this little guy . He’s 5 months old and already incredibly scarred from the terrible treatment he endured at the hands of his breeder. As you can see from the photo above, he’s very shocked and scared to suddenly find himself in a new environment, and he doesn’t quite know what to make of us cooing over him constantly. His trust will come slowly and so far he shuns our company and prefers instead to hide under the closest piece of furniture.

My weekend didn’t involve as much cooking as it did bathing a stinky pooch and generally cleaning up after him and his constant accidents, but I did make a wonderful red bean curry from Smitten Kitchen on Friday which held us over for the weekend and gave us the strength to run around puppy-proofing the garden.

Red Bean Curry with a Fried Egg

Parc Thabor in Spring bloom

In other news, if it weren’t for the freshly budding plants telling me it’s only the beginning of Spring, I would swear it was summer already. My winter jackets are packed away for the foreseeable future and the weekend was spent outside in the sun – in a tee-shirt! The air is fresh and clean and there is always a refreshing breeze dancing around. Daffodils and other bulb flowers have sprouted up everywhere and the browns and muted greens are turning to bright viridians, yellows, purples and pinks. And it’s not only in nature that I’m sensing changes… maybe it’s the new dog, or the fact that I’m almost finished with my teaching contract and am in the midst of figuring out the next step, but the air seems to be tingling with unknowns just around the corner. Among these unknowns is the day when Shilah accepts us, which might be tomorrow or might be months from now. Even if he always stares at me in fright, as if I’m a monster coming to hurt him, I can’t stop looking at this handsome little face.

Shilah means 'brother' in the Navajo language.