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March 29, 2007
undogly
There are moments when the puppies frustrate me to no end (say, for example, when they squeak insistently to go out like their little bladders are about to pop, but then I end up standing out there for twenty minutes while they leisurely tour our tiny front yard), and then there are the moments when they make me laugh and I forget that I am irritated because we were just outside for the third time in the past thirty minutes. Other moments I just want to grab them up and squeeze them because they are cuteness with whiskers and paws.
Max loves to burrow. Maddy does too, but she's not nearly as dedicated to it as Max is. Max will spend 15 minutes getting her blanket fluffed just right and tucked under her just so. She does this with the sheets if she's on our bed, burrowing under the covers until she's found the perfect spot, then twisting and turning and digging and pulling and tucking until she is nested snugly in a ball in the sheets. Sometimes she skips the sheets and burrows in the pillows instead. (She prefers Mike's side of the bed for this because he has more pillows.) Max slithers in between two pillows, usually knocking one off the bed in the process, then nests until all you can see are two shiny eyes and one black nose peering out at you from a stack of pillows.
Maddy is a vocal dog. She barks more than Max does (at leaves, other dogs, people talking loudly while we're out on the deck, a neighbor who has the unmitigated gall to get out of his car! in front of his house! which, unfortunately - for both him and us - happens to be right next to ours), but more often than not, she makes her thoughts known with other sounds, some of which are next-to-impossible to translate into writing. For example, she complains. Loudly, if it's something she's particularly displeased with. If she's moved from the spot where she's comfortably sleeping, she complains to whoever is moving her, then she huffs as she gets settled into her new spot. When we took her and Max for a visit to my grandparents' house, she complained for the first several miles and probably would have kept it up for the entire trip if Mike hadn't intervened. She also squeaks. If there's food she thinks she's entitled to, if she wants to be picked up, if she needs to go out, or she just wants attention, she'll let you know. Occasionally she'll bark at you if you're not moving fast enough for her liking. And if her vocal expressions don't get your attention, she has plenty of physical ones as well. When I'm cutting up vegetables and her squeaking has failed to make a carrot or tomato migrate down to her, she jumps up and pokes me with her nose. If I'm holding a treat and taking too long to give it to her, she'll do the same thing.
And after typing all this out, it occurred to me that the puppies are quite spoiled.
Posted by oracle at March 29, 2007 6:35 AM in the doxies / the fourth year