Madame Bovary lives in Santa Cruz

Emma’s litter was named after peanut butters: Skippy, Jif, Smuckers and Santa Cruz. It felt like a sign to come across a puppy named Santa Cruz. It also felt weird to be shouting the name of our town every time we tried to call her, so we renamed her Emma. We got the idea from my sister, who thought she looked like Madame Bovary. Madame Bovary’s first name is Emma and it stuck.

My husband googled Madame Bovary and informed me that she lives above her means and destroys the lives of those she loves. Key aspects of her personality include impulsiveness, recklessness, emotional instability, dissatisfaction and boredom. This turned out to be disturbingly prophetic. Emma is not a bad dog, but she is an agent of a chaos who racks up astronomical vet bills. In hindsight we should have gone with our second choice for a name, Pickles.