{ chicken }

yet another lovely thing happened in 2011: bunny (my itty-bitty papillon pup) and i welcomed a little CHICKEN into our lives:

i met chicken when i was away on the LL bean signature shoot in puerto rico. she was one of many, many stray dogs we saw roaming the country during our week-long stay. they were everywhere, in families and packs of all ages and shapes. in an otherwise breathtaking place, the sight of this lent a heart-wrenching undercurrent. even worse, they were all so loving and sweet; i wanted to take at least 100 of them home with me.

what was different about chicken was she was all alone. our crew found her while shooting one day in an especially remote location, on a mostly-untouched part of the island. she looked very ill. there were no other dogs around, no tourists or neighborhood people to slip table scraps to her. and yet she was the sweetest pup of them all.

without a real plan in mind, i simply decided i had to get her off that beach, and one of our local crew members volunteered to drive her to the closest veterinarian. the vet turned out to be an amazing guy, who has personally rescued hundreds of dogs from across puerto rico, and who still texts me weekly (three months later!) to check in on chicken's well-being. he discovered she was much, much sicker than i'd expected. we immediately had to put her into emergency surgery.

two and a half weeks later, her stitches were removed and chicken boarded a cargo flight to new york city (big thanks to dr. castro and william grey for helping me coordinate this complicated operation). picking her up from the airport was such a surreal, joyful experience! but her health problems lingered, and it took another month of treatment before she was properly on her feet. it was so hard to watch her go through it all ~ after she'd already been through so much ~ which is why it's now so indescribably rewarding to see her healthy, and happy in her comfy new life.

as for why i named her chicken? after she'd been whisked off to the local doc, i was chatting about hypothetical names for her with craig, the makeup artist on set. i told him how i had originally planned to name bunny 'little edie' (after edie beale, of grey gardens fame), but that when i met her i just couldn't see her as anything other than a bunny. craig said, "didn't edie used to call everyone she loved 'chicken'?" i'd forgotten that detail from the film, but looking out across that near-empty oceanfront, dotted with wild chickens instead of scorched sunbathers, i knew that had to be her name. and i'm so grateful to have found her.

{ wearing: lanvin for h+m sunnies, rachel rachel roy earrings, primary jacket (previously worn HERE), rodarte t-shirt, holy-g inc pants, tabitha simmons boots (recently seen HERE) }