Kensington is 6 years old, as cute as a button but as sharp and sassy as a hot pink thumbtack. She is also a brave young thing, smiling and chatting and doing the splits for us this afternoon, just a few days after having stitches on her forehead after being scratched in the face by a dog – her own dog too. Our little friend Kensi was adopted by our good friends Nick and Krista when she was just ten months old, first under a fostering arrangement, but then when she was two, officially. Since then she has been growing into a beautiful and clever little comedian who is every bit as much the child of our beautiful, clever and very funny friends as her older brother Lexington, or Lexi. Though we don’t see this dear family as often as we’d like, we try to visit them at Krista’s Red Dragon Café occasionally, and because my brother Alan is in town and wanted to see them, we drove over there today to spend some time in their company. Today, I feel like I got a real sense of Kensington.

When Kensi appeared, she was wrapped in a bright green bathrobe over her leggings and t-shirt. At 6 years old, she is already outrageously stylish. But I noticed right away that she had a nasty wound on her forehead. When I asked her what happened, she explained that she was carrying their dog Bluesy and suddenly two other dogs appeared and Bluesy leapt up and scratched her in the face. Apparently he had become excited and, perhaps wanting to defend Kensi, he had scrambled out of her arms and gone after them. There was a lot of blood and panic, and after Krista had determined that Kensi’s eye was safe, she rushed her to a good doctor to have her forehead stitched up properly. A few days later, Kensi seemed unfazed by what must have been a terrifying experience. I asked Krista if she was now scared of Bluesy, she told me that Kensi had actually hugged Bluesy afterwards and thanked her doggie for trying to protect her from the other dogs. She had also reassured her beloved pet that she wasn’t in trouble and wasn’t going to be put to sleep. Impressed by her brave and kind heart, I decided to give Kensi a little gift – a cute little Japanese pouch in the shape of a fish. She took to it right away, pulling at the drawstrings to open and close the pouch. “She loves pouches,” explained Krista. Then Kensi took the pouch in one hand and started stuffing it down into the top of her t-shirt. When we asked her what she was doing, she said with a mischievous grin, “Well that’s where Mommy puts her cell phone!”