this is how to start a new year

So today, I drove up into the hills with a good friend with lots of excellent talking and singing and silence, met some nice people, and brought home a dog. A very large dog. Right now, he’s on the floor, occassionally wagging while we listen to some music, and I try to calm down sufficiently for sleep.

He is large (very very large), white, has mottled skin, and loves people. Yet, for all that, he is not at all like Howard, for which I am grateful. More docile, more secure in his position in the world. His own entity. Whew.

His farts are amazingly powerful. Like the elephant house in the zoo. They are so strong that it’s hard not to view them as an accomplishment.

He is very very good at sleeping. On the four hour car ride home, he wanted very much to be touched, but once we stopped encouraging him, he did some good car riding. You can’t encourage an animal with that powerful a nudge, not and enjoy future driving safety. No, not even if it is a very loving nudge.

He has met at least 9 people and 2 cats that are a part of my life, and he was pretty okay with that.
He was ready for bed by 9:30pm, and I get the sense he felt that was very late.

When he is happy, he wears his tail in a tight little curl over the top of his back.

I am going to have to be a much more diciplined dog owner. Misbehavior has greater consequences and is much more convenient. Thing like:

• Making sure that requests for pats and attention don’t escalate into obnoxiousness. He grabs with his foot and nudges. It’s really cute when circumstances permit. But how can a dog judge circumstances?
• Leash etiquette. No more moseying outside with a dog and then putting on a leash. Zero tolerance pulling policy–I could end up with serious road rash.
• Not only no table food or talking to him while I’m eating, but not talking to him from the dining table at all. His head is above the table’s surface with no effort on his part. The table zone is going to have to be a no dog zone.
• Car etiquette. He’s pretty good. But he and I need to discuss how you don’t walk up to any old car and request to enter.
• He doesn’t know how to sit on command. And he doesn’t tip backward into a sit when you hold deliciousness over his head. We are so going to learn how to sit. And then, we are going to sit for everything.
• No more airing the house by means of the front screen door. Someone is used to just bumping to see if a doggy door (yes, they do make them in XXXL) will give him access outside. He discovered how to bump my front screen door immediately.
• We’re going to have to do some serious brushing to get his coat into shape and his skin behaving. He looks like a sheep, and he smells like one too.

We have a lot to teach one another, this dog and I.

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