You don't bring me flowers anymore

Well, it had to happen.  The love had to tarnish a little.  Today I am officially a bit less in love with Louie the puppy.  And, honestly, I think the feeling is mutual.

True story:

Since we are heading into our last few days before school starts, I suggested we take a little field trip today to a farm/state park in a neighboring town.  It has trails, ponds, woods, a working dairy and ice cream stand.  Good mommy, right?  And since there was going to be so much to sniff, I thought we'd bring the puppy.  I was impressing myself with my awesomeness right about then.

Oh, pride. Why do you go before the fall?  Why not hang around a little longer? At least until we get home maybe?

We got there, traipsed all around, even let Louie off the leash for cute, playful running around the field with Sam. It was like a sunny 1970s movie, fuzzy around the edges and warming of the heart, with lots of humming and "la-la" music in the background.

Lauren hung onto the leash and Louie as the rest of us went and got drinks and ice cream at the dairy.  Then we all headed to the car.  Lauren says something about Louie squatting earlier and acting funny.  Huh.  That's weird, I think.  As we continue to the car Louie, bless him, keeps sitting down.  Over and over again.  We start noticing that he's leaving behind marks every time he sits down.  Skidmarks, if you will. Very smelly ones.

NO. nonononono. I lift up his tail.  Yes. Absolutely yes. Somehow he hadn't quite finished his business enough to leave a present.  The present has mushed into his fur and tail and legs.  A very big present. Cartoon-like, I look from Louie to our car, Louie--->car.  So here's a MacGyver situation: in the car, I have a pad of flipchart paper, a glass mug from our kitchen, my textbooks recently purchased for school, and two little plastic sandwich baggies.  No towel, no bathtub, no fireman's hose.

I take Louie and the mug and the baggies over to the pond.  Although he WILL NOT APPROACH THE POND.  He vehemently opposes the pond idea.  So I take little mug-fulls of water to his behind, over and over again, which frankly doesn't help much.  Now it's just a wetter mess than before.  With Lauren's help, I finally get him into the pond (and he manages to get me in, too) for a little dousing. It's a little better but still not up to the trip home.

We return to the car hoping that someone magically produced a crate and deodorizer while we were gone.  Still just the paper and the books...which (hello?) are in big plastic bags!  Yay, us! With one are-you-thinking-what-I'm-thinking glance, we craft a makeshift plastic diaper out of the bag, tearing two holes in the bottom for his legs and pulling it up around his tummy.  It works.  We spread the flipchart paper on the seats just in case. It doesn't take care of the stink but it protects the car, thereby protecting Louie from eternal shunning by the man of the house.

Poor boy, he's subdued and embarrassed all the way home.  We have definitely insulted his doghood. His expression says what the heck, people?! Is there no pleasing you humans? First the elizabethan collar and now this?  

Oh, but don't cry for Louie too long.   When we got home, he got cleaned off with the hose, escaped through our open gate and got back into the car all muddy.  Touche, Louie.

p.s. Have a great Labor Day weekend!  G and I are heading to Boston's North End tonight for a little pasta and cannoli, then tomorrow we're taking the kids to Fenway for a little Red Sox baseball  (hopefully not in the rain and lightning, please.) Goodbye, summer!

Poor little conehead

Turns out there is something worse than losing all your data on your computer*:

Getting neutered.  

(Just ask Louie.)

First they shave you in all sorts of undignified ways.

This particular look surprised us.

Then you have to wear a sad little collar

for 10 to 14 days

(They try to class it up by calling it an Elizabethan collar

but really it's just a plastic cone.

I'm pretty sure Queen Elizabeth I would be insulted.)

No running and playing.  For 10 to 14 days.

No bathing or getting wet. For 10 to 14 days.

Instead?

Bumping your cone against walls, stairs, the floor

as you adjust to your new width.

(Do we laugh? Yes we do.)

Very sad.

Ah, perspective.

When I went to pick up Louie, they gave me this kit: 

Spay/neuter kit?!

Whoa! I had no idea this was a self-serve neutering operation! 

I hope they give some pretty detailed instructions.  

Cause I don't know if I'm comfortable...

All day Louie looked at me like this.  

Finally I realized what he reminded me of. 

He's like the RCA dog and the victrola all in one, 

don't you think?

You're welcome, Bob Barker.

p.s. Thanks for your condolences and sympathies for my Clementine.  (As Allysha so perfectly put it: Clementine is dead.  Long live Clementine!) Things are looking up as I reinstall and reconfigure and upload.

Oh, the indignity

Because we were gone overnight this past weekend, we found a place for Louie to stay--a kennel that also bills itself as a pet spa. As long as he was there, I signed him up for a bath and nail clipping because he had an unfortunate encounter with a bunch of pine tar last week and the goop had cemented between his toes and a little in his fur around his feet.

From what we can tell, he had a fabulous time mixing it up with the lady pups and charming the staff. His fur stylist, however, must have been a stowaway from the 80s. Maybe she worked at a salon and they finally had to let her go because no one wanted 80s rock mullets anymore. So she thought...I know, I'll do DOG fur into big styled mountains (by the way, they weren't supposed to cut his hair, just shampoo).

The result is kind of bewildering. At first I kept looking at him, wondering "is this really our dog?" I think he looks like Labyrinth David Bowie (if you've seen The Flight of the Conchords that will be a tiny bit funny).

Greg thinks he bears a striking resemblance to Rod Stewart:

Maddy calls him Uncle Jessie because he looks like Full House John Stamos (yes, my kids are well acquainted with Full House reruns. It's a sickness. They TiVo it).

Basically, he ended up with layered, sticking-up hair in the front (the dreaded claw/bangs to heaven look) with a weird part. Rock on, Louie. Poor puppy. Come to find out, even dogs have bad hair days. Rest assured, we're not laughing with him, we're laughing at him. Do you think he can tell?

[edited to add picture:
sadly, this is only a taste of
the rock-on-ness of his cut 'n style.
Doesn't he look like he's begging
us to never do that to him again?]

Greetings from the bottom of the well...

Who knew that a small change like adding a 9-pound puppy to the household would throw off my life so much? It's official: I'm a wimp. Causing me to ask: Is there such a syndrome as post-puppy-partum depression? I think I might have had a touch of it.

But we've all gotten acquainted and I'm realizing I really can put him in the crate and leave the house or shower or work (SO not like a baby!) so I'm slowly getting back to all my other details.

By the way, I promise this will not turn into a dog blog but here are the final few pending bits of info:

His name is Louis (we say it Louie)--a shout out to Louis Armstrong not the French kings (not that there's anything wrong with French kings or anything). It took us an embarrassingly long time to decide. (Or, rather, we had each decided on something different and WOULD NOT BE BUDGED). Apparently consensus builders we are not. After complex negotiations (and my take-charge moment at the vet) it's Louie. Unless something better comes along. Just kidding. Kind of.

Someone asked what breed he is. He's a Tibetan terrier (hopefully not Tibetan terror, which is what I first typed). They're supposed to be great companion dogs, very sensitive to their family, calm when inside and playful outside, and love to go in the car on adventures. As I said before, my marriage is riding on the hope that this is true. {Not really. G has been pretty great about Louie*. He even took him to soccer practice tonight.} A lot of the write-ups I found said that Tibetans have a great sense of humor. What does that mean in a dog? Does he pop up suddenly with a fake nose? Do impressions of cats? Tell knock-knock jokes?

So that's it for the dog lore. I promise to move on to talking about laundry (very plentiful here) or lilacs (they're gorgeous in our yard right now) or knuckle-cracking or something else equally fascinating.

*especially considering that he sleeps in his crate next to our bed. In order to minimize the night-time whining and crying. Greg didn't even want our BABIES, our very own posterity, to sleep in our room. But we tried it the other way, with the pup in the crate downstairs and he cried for hours. He doesn't say a peep in the crate when it's in our room. Louie 1, humans 0.