When we picked up Luna and Argos, they were fat, squirmy little babies. They were the biggest puppies I'd ever seen, like polar bear stuffed animals come to life. They lived the first few weeks of their life in a barn surrounded by sheep, and you could smell it on them. We gave them a bath that night, and every single week that month, and with each bath, the smell of wet sheep slowly dissipated.

Luna was the precocious one: she was smart and bigger than Argos, unafraid to explore when we took them outside. Argos, on the other hand, curled up in my brother's lap and immediately went to sleep on the car ride home from the breeder. While Luna observed from the corners of rooms to protect us, Argos was always squished up against our side, sleeping.

Since he was a puppy, Argos has always been the clingiest dog in the history of dog-kind. But there is a very depressing backstory that transforms his neediness from annoying to pitiful. A Disney-movie-esque tragedy struck Argos' little family when he was just a few hours old: his mother snuck out of the barn and crawled under the porch to give birth to him and his siblings. The owner couldn't find her, and it started to rain. The space under the porch flooded, and Argos was the only puppy that the mother could rescue. By the time the owner discovered the emergency, it was too late for the rest of his siblings. (I know—it just makes you want to cry looking at those pitiful little eyes now, doesn't it?)