My fourth child looks nothing like me. She is black. I have skin that on a good day can be described as "pasty". She has beautiful brown eyes. Mine are bluish-greenish-grayish, the color of pond water. She is smart, energetic, and very well behaved. Me? Not so much so. And I don't mean to brag, but, she is also one hell of a Frisbee player. Whereas my athletic endeavors these days are mostly limited to lugging two 18 pound babies around in their car seats or dragging some 40 odd pounds of squirming 6 year old out of McDonald's. My only girl is adopted and she will be three years old this May. Her name is Basta, the Italian (and also Spanish, I believe) for "enough". (An exclamation I'm certain my maternal equivalent in Rome or Trieste might shout at her own boys when they are found trying to finger paint the cat's tail so she can be "decorated" like the Christmas tree.) So named because when she came into our lives she was the third of a set of three. Australian Shepherds, that is. My fourth child is a dog.

Everywhere I go in the house I am tailed like a cheating husband. Bathroom? She is there dropping one of her five hundred tennis balls in my lap, a downside to not being able to pee standing up. Kitchen? The floor is very clean as it is mopped by dog tongue several times throughout the day. She unfortunately doesn't do countertops. Family room? She is snoring under the computer desk as I write this. The only room she is not allowed in (due to shedding not temperament) is the baby cave. And even then she lurks right outside, whining her displeasure at being excluded.

Australian Shepherds (or "Aussies" as it were) are herd dogs. Originally bred to work with sheep and cattle, they are highly intelligent and incredible workers. This herding instinct is obviously innate because we have no livestock and yet my dog "herds" everything she can get close to. The six year old is constantly elbowing her out of his way. The prairie dogs behind our home disappear faster than quarters in a slot machine when she is back there. And the cat just hates her. Cats are funny that way about being directed. (Come to think of it, cats are funny that way about a lot of things.) And honestly, I've not seen many sights more outrageously funny than watching this dog "herd" her basketball around in the back yard! Nose down to the ground, rolling the ball all over, and barking and growling the entire time, urging it to behave. I don't have a great deal of free time lately, but one morning I actually stood out on the deck and captured one of these play sessions on video. Many, many years from now when she joins her big sister dogs up in the Great Off-Leash-Area in the Sky, I will have something nearly tangible to remember her by.

I am often reminded by other P.W.K.'s (People With Kids) that I surely must be crazy to take on the care of a dog in addition to three boys. "What must you be thinking?!" they say, shaking their heads in disbelief. Well, I'll tell ya...

On the days when I truly believe I am going to lose my mind, when I have had my hand pooped in, when I have been scowled at for saying "No" to having M&Ms for dinner, when another 24 hours have come and gone without my shadow darkening the stall of the shower. When I have folded my three hundredth load of laundry, answered my eight hundredth email, and wiped smudgy fingerprints from the fridge for the twelve hundredth time. When I wake up in the pre-dawn hours and would rather be infested with a gut full of pinworms than get out of bed, I remember I have this glorious creature who loves me unconditionally. I have some ears to scratch. I have a fuzzy tummy to warm my feet. And no judgmental glares when I open that bottle of wine right on the dot of five o'clock. Having all of that makes the extra trouble well worthwhile.

Make no mistake, she is not a simple "pet". She is a part of my family. In a house full of messy testosterone, she is my little girl. The only one I'll ever have.