Aug
1
Since Ruby the dog has arrived, I’ve:
• Been snouted in the back of the leg at least 57391 times. She has a habit of excitedly coming up behind you and pressing her nose against your skin, and if I’m wearing shorts it feels a tiny bit like being goosed by a slug. If I’m wearing a skirt, she’ll go right ahead and lift the fabric in order to deliver a proper snouting, and we had one incident in a park when she skirt-snouted a lady whose facial expression I can only describe as “Initially horrified, then (thankfully) amused.”
• Seen this face every time I eat something:
I know Labs are notoriously food-driven but wow, this dog really wants you to believe she has never eaten ever. On the training front, we need to work on begging, along with most of the other basics, which she soooort of has down but really more as the result of being good-natured than actually following any directions, if that makes sense. “Drop it” needs to be a priority, since she practically gulped down a hair scrunchie yesterday thinking it was some sort of snack.
• Been completely surprised by how the cat’s behaving around the dog. I was so worried about the cat’s safety ahead of time and whether she’d be traumatized, and instead she has the dog scuttling around looking worried. The cat is doing all these dickish things like lurking around a corner in order to hump up and do a bunch of swatting whenever the dog comes derping her way into the room and it’s just MEAN. I mean, I’m glad she’s holding her ground and all, but at this point the dog wants nothing whatsoever to do with her, so, like, can’t we all just get along? Also considering the cat’s past history of being scared of bathmats (seriously) and other inanimate objects the entire act is faintly ridiculous, like:
Cat still sleeps next to my pillow at night and I can almost feel the waves of superiority coming off of her body as she bores little stare-holes into the dog’s place down on the floor. Neener.
• Slipped in dog-slop water like fifty times. We have her food and water bowl in the kitchen where there are wood floors, which means every time she drinks (BLORT SLORP BLOP MLORP) water gets everywhere and yikes, someone’s eventually going to break a hip.
• Given this dog EIGHT MILLION SNOOGLES. And smoothed her ears back in order to say, idiotically, “Who looks like a seal? YOU do! YOU look like a seal!” And repeatedly chanted with the boys to the tune of the Spider-Man theme, “Ruby dog, Ruby dog, doin’ everything a Ruby dog can. Can she snout? On your leg? Yes she can, she’s a dog. LOOK OUT, here comes Ruuuuby dooooooog.” (Dog’s tail reaction: WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM.)
• Been followed everywhere I go in the house, all day long. NOW what are you doing, her face says, and I’m like, uh sorry just going to the bathroom, and she’s like I WILL WAIT OUTSIDE THE DOOR. I WILL WAIT FOREVER IF I HAVE TO. Jeez I love this dog so much already.
Jul
31
For a while I was convinced that Gilbert the shelter dog was meant to be ours. He was a border collie/Aussie mix, not at all the breed we were interested in, and he was all the way over in central Oregon. But I fell in love with his photos and video, and JB surprised me by agreeing that Gilbert seemed awesome, and I spent hours filling out the shelter application, which was surprisingly long and detailed, but I was like more room for me to convince them we’re the perfect family! and I wrote and wrote and wrote and the shelter director told me that they would collect all the applications and make a decision at the end of the week and we planned to arrive at the shelter towards the end of our vacation and then halfway through the week I got an email saying Gilbert had been adopted out the previous Saturday. File under great mysteries I’ll never solve: who got that dog, and how were they so amazing the shelter totally abandoned their whole ‘collect all the applications’ business? Ah well, at least Gilbert has a new home, and that’s what’s important (but also screw you, shelter, just a little bit?).
We visited a shelter where we met Bea, who was a sweet mixed breed who pressed her nose into my hands and I kind of loved her but she was over eight years old and it just didn’t seem right, she seemed like she wanted to be somewhere peaceful where she could curl up and rest without being bombarded by loud-ass children. Then there was Fred, the uncreatively-named yellow Lab I drove to Coos Bay to see, and I really really hoped that would work out but he was just too strong and rambunctious and at first I thought that would be okay, that we could deal with that as we worked on training, but I couldn’t keep ahold of the leash and he scared the kids and he knocked Dylan over and oh man I was so sad but I had to pass on Fred.
There were lots of other shelter searches (lord, so very many pitbulls and chihuahuas) and fruitless emails with breeders looking for adult dogs (my favorite was the snooty lady who wrote me that she was selling her male show dog for $6,000 and she doubted very much that was what I was looking for, I so wanted to pull a Pretty Woman on her — “Big mistake! HUGE!” — but, well, frankly she was right) and some eventual consideration of a puppy even though my puppy con list was like a mile long (meaning the cons vs the pros, as opposed to a puppy convention) (OMG PUPPYCON I WANT TO GO TO THERE and then come back home while someone else cleans up) and then, and THEN —
I am breaking that paragraph because my own run-on sentence was making me run out of air. Anyway, and THEN JB ended up talking to the Lab breeder who we got our former dog from, and like the time before, it just so happened that she had an adult female that she had been considering adopting out and since the previous situation had worked out so well she was happy to re-home this dog with us, and so JB drove up to Kent to pick her up, and you GUYS, may I introduce Ruby?
(Note stolen Minecraft Creeper.)
She’s three years old and she is the best.
(PS: If you’re wondering how the cat/dog dynamic is going so far, if you’ve seen this video you have the general idea.)
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