It's Bao's birthday, today. He's 10. I can't believe it -- it seems like only yesterday he was a tiny baby puppy, wobbling around on legs the size of my thumbs and learning to eat solid food by licking pablum off my fingers.

As you can see, we're back in Mexico. It's hot here, but not as hot as it is in Tucson. And there's always a breeze off the ocean.

Bao loves our new place. I'd worried about the built-up bench that runs the length of the balcony, because I was afraid he might be tempted to get up on his hind legs and peer over the railing and maybe tumble off -- which would be a disaster, as we're seven storeys up. But happily, he's shown no interest in doing anything so athletic. He's a wonderfully cautious little dog.

What he does love to do is to lie on the cushions with his nose pointing into the breeze, watching the comings and goings of people on the beach. We sit out there every morning, before we go down to the pool. We're much closer to the beach than we were in the old place -- here, I could stand on my balcony and throw an orange, and it would land on the sand. That's how close we are. Every night we go to sleep with the sound of the sea in our ears.