Adriana has had BonBon since she was sixteen, and this year he turns ten. She named him after the Spanish word for a small sweet, then spent a decade growing up beside him. He lives with her parents now, but she is still the one who comes home for him.
He was the dog she asked for as a child. For a long time that was the whole wish: a dog of her own. When she finally got him, he became the constant. They grew up in the same years. She learned how to take care of someone who depended on her; he learned her hours, her comings and goings, the door she uses when she is home. Through losses, and through the days that were easy, he stayed.
That is a long time to be someone’s first dog. A first dog arrives while you are still becoming who you are, and Adriana has had a decade of that: ten years of the same face waiting, ten years of a companion who does not keep score of the hard seasons.
He has been her rock. She wanted something she would still recognize later, when she is older and talking about the first dog, the one she grew up with, the one who showed up for the losses and for the happy days too. She wanted one portrait that would stay.