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ou guys are on restriction,'' Dr. B. told us. ``The next dog you get, I have to approve it.''
By that she meant, if we brought in another dog that she had any doubts about, she would just take it away from us.

       Shadow cost $100, but that included a free bag of food and a coupon to get her fixed.
   She had been born in a South-Central animal shelter in August. We started looking for her in October. Our friends insisted on coming with us as we went from shelter to shelter, afraid Amy would fall in love with the sickest thing to come along.
   But we found Shadow in a pet store in Westwood. PALS had rescued her from the South-Central shelter and kept her for a month to make sure she was healthy before putting her up for adoption.
   She was playful and quick to lick Amy. Most importantly she was strong. Amy took her for her first checkup. ``You don't realize,'' Dr. B. said to the puppy, ``your four paws just landed in the lap of luxury.''
       ``[Dr. B.] has a message for you,'' Amy told me later. `` `Good job.' ''

       Again, we took another puppy with us to Sherman Oaks. But Shadow was too full of energy. She chewed furniture, bit fingers, peed in the wrong places, once on top of an important piece of paper that had the misfortune to land on the floor.
We were _ mostly me _ the most paranoid dog owners in the world.
   Before getting Shadow, we had moved to a new house. Most of Tug's and Selkie's toys and bedding had been thrown out-- just in case. I never let her off the property. And when I found a foreign deposit on the front lawn from a strange dog, I not only picked it up, but I wrapped the newspaper I picked it up with and wrapped it in a plastic bag.
   Then I wrapped that bag in another plastic bag.
   I guess I would have wrapped Shadow in plastic bags if I could have.
   Each month we took her to the vet for booster shots. In late October, she started sneezing.
   I panicked, suddenly realizing that we had washed her in the same plastic tub that we had bathed Tug and Selkie in. I e-mailed some vets, but was reassured distemper could not be transmitted after so long. ``Distemper needs a live animal or a laboratory to survive,'' one vet said in an e-mail.

       The sneezing didn't last. In December, she got her final vaccination shot, which included the shot for rabies. I clasped the rabies tag in my hand like an alcoholic with a one-year chip from AA. ``Now we have a real dog,'' I said.
   However, she was the most paranoid animal we could have had. Since we had kept her away from other dogs, she didn't know how to play with them.

       ``Maybe Shadow needs a friend,'' Amy caught herself saying one day. She immediately made me swear never to repeat that. But fate was already working to bring us to Galen.