As I’ve previously mentioned – N and I have a very adorable puppy. He’s around 10 months old now, so he’s slowly growing into himself. We are absolutely crazy about this creature – he makes us laugh every day, and he’s absolutely gorgeous. Apparently 3/4 Boxer and 1/4 English Bulldog makes for a beautiful dog. He is not quite the tough, manly dog that my husband had originally hoped for, however.
Little Mr. Wiggly-Butt, as he is known is our house (or Mr. Snot-Face, Mr. Frowny-Face, Little Mr. Man, Mr. Grumpy-Butt, Mr. Stink-Face/Stink-Butt, or any of a thousand other random nicknames – to the point where I’m surprised he still knows his actual name), is a little bit of a princess. He cannot stand the rain, and will cause a bit of a commotion if you try to put him out in the rain to do his business. The most extreme example of this came when I was attempting to work from home on Halloween. It was raining quite heavily, and I had to heft him up and physically put him outside. Immediately, he leaned his entire body up against the door to stay as dry as possible and howled so miserably he sounded like someone was beating him. With a really BIG stick. I let him back inside, terrified the neighbors would call the ASPCA, and shortly thereafter he relieved himself on the carpet.
We’ve since learned that if you put his collar and his leash on and walk with him, he’s a bit better – apparently it’s okay as long as you’re being tortured, too.
He also loves to be brushed – although he has issues with the idea that after he’s done being brushed he does not need to a) eat the brush or b) continually paw Mommy’s arm to get more brush-time. Nor does he need to whimper because the pawing doesn’t work.
The newest thing we’ve learned about our little prima-donna (who prances across a wet yard to avoid getting his paws wet, but will inexplicably dig in the mud just to make sure I spend some time vacuuming) is actually pretty surprising, and had me giggling for a large portion of the evening yesterday. Our adorable little Blunder likes to have his nails filed – with an emery board.
The dog that would not stand for us to trim his nails with the rotary grinder thingy, got very curious when I was filing my nails last night, and would not leave my emery board alone. I tried to get him to leave it alone – first I told him to “get,” and he wandered away for about a minute. Next, I poked his face with my finger and told him to leave it, which worked for another minute. Then, I poked the emery board gently up his nose a little bit (hey, I’m an 8-year-old, what can you expect?), which didn’t work atall, as he simply tried to nibble on it afterwards.
Finally, inspiration struck - I grabbed his paw in my hand, and gently began to file one toenail. No reaction! He didn’t pull back, he didn’t try to eat or sniff the emery board; I had achieved what I wanted – peace and quiet. Except that I was doing his toes instead of my fingers. So I sneakily stopped and tried to go back to my fingernails, at which point I got pawed to the point of pesteration, and just gave up and worked on his toenails for a while.
You take what you can get.
