During the early days i was so tired i couldn’t think. I was sleeping an average of two hours at a time. The puppy cried if it was hungry, cried if it was sleepy, cried if it wanted attention, cried if it was about to or had just gone potty. It cried for every reason imaginable and it seemed to sleep in occasional 30 minute increments at which point i would collapse in the middle of whatever i was doing and sleep simultaneously for as long as she would let me, whether it be in a chair, on the floor, or in the bed. If she was quiet, i stopped everything and slept. She had an ear piercing, shrill, high-pitched yelp that made me want to rip my eyeballs out of their sockets and jam them down the sink drain. I cried, a lot. I can remember asking my mother on the phone, “what have i done?” And “do you think i will ever sleep more than 2 hours again?” Little did i know, there would be months upon months of those phone calls ahead where Cashew had done the unspeakable and/or improbable and i had to ask my mother to remind me why i loved this dog so… she was different from sili. She was not sensitive nor introverted. She was loud and boisterous. She was wild and smart. So smart that she figured out how to unlatch her own crate, and eventually her sister’s too. The early days with Cashew were not easy, not by far, but they were worth it. Cashew would come to be a really sound ranch dog and i would grow to love her for everything she was. But, like i said, the early days were hard.