Chet Baker: Now We Are Ten

From The not Writer’s Almanac: Today is the birthday of Chet Baker, Boston Terrier,  born December 12, 2004, in Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, by Peanut Brittle out of Miss Chili Bean. Grandparents: Handsome Boy and Maeve Bean.

From an early age, Baker loved the camera, and as a small puppy, upon hearing the Schwingg! Zickefoose’s first camera, a small Olympus point and shoot, made when it was turned on, he trotted over and posed, ready to make Internet history.

Chet Baker has two siblings, Liam

 Once she finishes her next bird book, Zickefoose will follow the plan her dog has set out for her and resume work on a book about Chet Baker’s life. She writes, “It’s interesting to write someone else’s memoir, to go through his life and pick out the high points and the low points, and to realize that his life is really yours, too. That’s how close we are. He is my constant companion, my familiar, my muse, and I don’t want to imagine a world without him. So I’d better get cracking and describe this one the best I can. Because there never was a dog like Chet Baker.”

Julie Zickefoose is a painter and writer who lives on a nature sanctuary in Appalachian Ohio. She is the author of Letters from Eden and The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds, due in spring 2012. http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com