Rob's family

  The Boston Marathon is typically run on the third Monday in April - Patriot's day.  Three doors down from our house in Wayland (10 Snakebrook to our 4) lived the Salazars (they were Boston Globe customers and it was difficult to understand their Cuban accents).  One of their kids was Alberto and he ran/won the Boston Marathon in 1982 (12 years older than me - much later banned from the sport for life).   In Massachusetts, the herring spawn in the ponds they were born in.  Those ponds connect to streams and rivers (e.g. the Charles River) that empty into the Atlantic also in the spring around the same time. Herring is a pretty generic term - in Massachusetts they're Alewives (we just called them herring).  When I lived in Boston in 1991, I took the T - Redline - into the city and caught the train at Alewife. Although there has been lots of damming of the rivers, society has built fish ladders so that they can jump upstream to reach their historic spawning grounds.  It appears

Elsa came from family in Indiana.  With as little judgment as I can manage, she seems to be a family dog Se knows how to walk and socialize with people.  She's has puppies (maybe recently).  One day one she was REALLY shy.  Retiring, cowering, disappear into the ground shy.  Her default move is to lay down low and show her stomach. She came in without meeting Gino - he was in the car.  She spent a couple hours in the kitchen by herself.   We have two dog gates and set them up in the short hallway to the kitchen 30 inches apart.  As I introduced the dogs I sat between and fed them both treats.  They seemed a little interested in each other.  We waited until Tracey came home and introduced them outside.  Gino is very "in your face" and I perceive that he can be a lot.  They seemed mostly fine. Back inside we separated them again for dinner.  Later I took down one of the gates so they could sniff each other directly.   She's had several litters of puppies (not spade - it