A couple of months ago I came home from a morning TV shift. My daughters were sitting on the couch, my wife on a loveseat next to it. For some reason, my oldest daughter seemed to be in some sort of awkward position. I couldn’t make out why but nothing appeared to be…ok.
“Daddy, I did something. I hope you aren’t going to be mad.”
This is a difficult opening gambit. My wife wasn’t crying, so it couldn’t have been catastrophic. I just saw the cars outside, and they hadn’t been wrecked. My oldest daughter rides horses almost every day, and sometimes she gets hurt. Couple that with a tendency nearing hypochondria and there are a lot of health-related tropes that fly around Chez Brand. Her skewed posture on the couch clicked in my brain and I knew she’d hurt herself. The question was how bad, and what would have to be done to fix whatever it was.
“We got a dog.” It was in her lap.
We’ve already got two dogs. The male, somewhere around a year old, is about 100 pounds of thick-chested beast. He is convinced that he is a tiny puppy, with a brain to match but he has the body of a killing machine directed by a very needy cerebrum. The female, some four months older, is mostly black lab and is about 55 pounds of feral cunning and abject loyal love. We rescued her from the side of the road as a sick and filthy puppy a year ago.
I’d just lost my cat a couple of months before. Our remaining cat was getting old and I’d been wrestling with the question of getting another one or waiting until Yayo was gone to get two kitties, like we’d done before. I’d decided to keep her stress level low and not add another cat to the mix, and here they come with a new dog, a six week old puppy. A mix of blue heeler and either border collie or lab, they didn’t know which. Blue eyes.
The Devil Child
He’s really cute. Really, really cute. And mischevous as hell.
It’s not like I could be the bad dad, put my foot down and tell them to take him back. He was a rescue from a kill shelter, so he was ours all right, ours just like the rest of them were.
He has only recently gotten to the point where he is not the devil incarnate when he isn’t sleeping. He chews everything he can – the ends of our coffee table, all magazines, anything my daughters carelessly leave within 36 inches or so of the ground. Shoes, makeup detritus, pencils, pens, remote controls, whatever. The devil.
He’s really cute. Twinkly blue eyes.
He is constantly playfighting with the female, at least when he isn’t chewing up things. He’ll pounce on her and they’ll roll all around the living room, chewing and nipping at each other’s faces, ears, legs, tails. When they’re outside, she’ll be focused on chasing a ball with the male dog and Cooper (the puppy) will wait, low in the grass, for his chance to run full-out in that clumsy big-feet-everywhere full-out gallop that puppies do, racing to leap on Aly and start gnawing at her so they can roll around in the grass. At this point, they’re not so far off being a match for each other in size, he’s grown roughly three times as large as he was at six weeks.
Cooper, for all his rambunctiousness, knows to leave the big dog alone. Boone wants to play with him, but he’s serious about his toys and loses himself in that blind focus. If Cooper challenges him the wrong way, Boone won’t back off and Cooper has learned this the hard way. Mostly, Cooper just leaves him alone and spends his time with Aly since she’s smaller and less threatening.
It’s interesting watching puppies grow up. The house is a shambles. We haven’t had the time to train him much yet which means there are pee pads around, ones he usually hits. Learning to go outside to relive himself is still a work in progress and that adds to the shreds of paper, bits of rubber toys, scarred household items, etc. I think my wife wants to use this as an opportunity for my oldest daughter to learn to train him, since the plan is that she’ll take him with her when she moves back for college next fall.
After an attack where he tries to get the food off of the plate you’re holding, or sneak a drink from the cup you have, he may calm down or go in search of something else to destroy. It’s generally about that time when he decides to leap onto the couch and lick all over your face in a clear expression of affection. He’s a nice dog. He means well and he’s a handful. He needs a lot of training. He is a cyclonic dervish of doggyness, racing in circles around the furniture, leaping on all sorts of things or bounding over them.
Sometimes he is very rewarding, especially when he snuggles against a body part and takes a nap, or when he looks at you with those eyes, not really concealing the playful fiendishness behind them. It’s going to take some time for him to settle down and learn how to be a dog though. He’s a work in progress.
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Astros lost, 3-2 in 12. Cold, wet, pink bats silent. Young players taking one step forward and two steps back. Manager making decisions on a knife edge, sharpened to a point of win or lose on which way you turn because there’s no margin. Horrible umpiring calls. Wandy dominant, dominant Myers robbed on another bad call and then the rut carved by best plans fills with water and turns to slop.
Back home for a weird set of a homestand, leading to what might be a particularly nasty interleague period. It’s a work in progress.