Never let it be said that Caleb is not the most ridiculously patient big brother ever. Troubadour (10 mos. old here) certainly thinks so.
Category Archives: puppy
Photoblogging: Obnoxiousness in Triptych
Never let it be said that Caleb is not the most ridiculously patient big brother ever. Troubadour (10 mos. old here) certainly thinks so.Filed under dogs, photoblogging, photography, puppy
Tuesday 10: Random Things My Puppy Drove Me to Say
- Grab him! He’s got a bottle of Corona!
- Oh my God, he’s got a knife!
- Please quit humping your brother’s head.
- Gross! He’s running around with the peed-on towel like it’s a cape!
- Oh no. Was that your iPod Nano?
- He’s got another knife!
- Where’d you get that box of spaghetti?
- Grab him! He’s got a pork chop!
- How did you manage to pee across six feet? And make those loops?
- Sweetie, I love you, but why are you such an asshole?
Photoblogging: That’s the funniest thing I ever heard!
I like to think Troubadour was laughing at a very funny joke he’d just heard. He didn’t bother to share it, though.Filed under photoblogging, photography, puppy, troubadour
Photoblogging: Purple Monkey Troubadour
I don’t have a kid, but I do have a puppy. So guess who got dressed up for Halloween?
Filed under costume, halloween, photoblogging, photography, puppy, troubadour
Our New Norm
Song Lyric of the Day:
Put up your dukes, lets get down to it / Hit me with your best shot / Why dont you hit me with your best shot / Hit me with your best shot / Fire away!
Pat Benatar / “Hit Me With Your Best Shot“
A typical evening at home:
Behold the action ears.
Behold the action ears.Soon to be added to my Flickr album, which I finally got around to updating tonight with pictures of Troubadour and another batch of Uruguay pics. Still waiting for Vimeo to finish loading mylatest dog-puppy video.
Trapped in the Stairwell
Trapped in the Stairwell from Patricia Lee on Vimeo.
Seven o’clock in the evening
And barking from the pup bugs me
He’s stealin’ and hoggin’
A new rope that should belong to me
And papa yells, “Share the rope, Caleb,” from the upstairs
Then he comes out and corners me
And it’s no surprise, it’s that Tru
Now he’s got this dumb look on his face
Like, what can be done?
How could I be so stupid to be have left the rope out in the sun?
Lost track of my toy
Why did I trust that boy?
Skipped the stairs, went to the floor
Couldn’t stand that little boor
There I stand, quickly tryin’ to make my escape
Looking for a way up
Tryin’ to go upstairs and past him
Then he stood in my way up the stairs
Said, “You won’t get away”
Looked at him, his eyes were crazy
Said, “Puppy, get out my way”
Said, “I got a rope to tame”
He said, “Please don’t go up there”
“Puppy, I’ve got to get game”
He said, “Our parents are coming down the stairs”
“Shh, shh, quiet
Hurry up and get in the bathroom”
He said, “Let’s not make a peep
From our parents we must sneak”
I said, “Why don’t I just go out the window?”
“Yeah, except for one thing, we’re in the basement”
“Oh crap, oh crap, think quick, push me fast up the stairs”
And now I’m up this darkest stairwell, tryin’ to figure out
Just how I’m gonna get my crazy ass past our parents
Lyrics customized by me, based on R. Kelly‘s “Trapped in the Closet.”
Terror at (My) Two Feet
Song Lyric of the Day:
Well I have been quietly standing in the shade / All of my days / Watch the sky breaking on the promise that we made / All of this rain / And I’ve been trying to find / What’s been in my mind
Alexi Murdoch / “All My Days“
8:06PM.
For those of you who have e-mailed asking me to write more about life with our new puppy, Troubadour, I have three words for you: tiny manorexic insomniac.
That’s right — Satan’s puppy is now trying out a third brand of food (Eukanuba was too hot, Purina Pro Plan too cold). We’re hoping Iams Smart Puppy food will be the one that’s just right. Never have we met a less food-motivated dog than this one. Granted, he’s obsessed with eating his big sister, Snoops’, food, but that’s about the extent of his interest in lowly dog food. Oh, and he throws tantrums whenever we dare to eat people food in front of him. Because nothing makes dinner more special than a puppy yelping as he hurls himself against your leg.
And it turns out Caleb spoiled us by sleeping for long stretches as a puppy. If Troubadour naps for 40 minutes, we call it a victory. He fights sleep like it’s his arch-nemesis. He’s even waking up earlier each day. He’s the Energizer Puppy — he just keeps going and going and going … Which is why his mommy and daddy are exhausted.
Caleb was by no means a perfect puppy; I never thought he’d get the hang of potty-training and I still haven’t quite forgiven him for destroying some of my precious movie posters (Backdraft! The Fugitive — with a typo!). But, boy, does he seem like a saint compared to his new baby brother.
At least they’re getting along really well. While Troubadour likes to bug Snoops by pulling her tail or grabbing her hind legs as she’s walking, he definitely has Caleb on a pedestal. So while Rich and I are going crazy trying to train him, we’re really enjoying watching his and Caleb’s relationship grow and deepen on a daily basis.
The true turning point for the two of them came five days after we brought Troubadour home. That night, Caleb let his little brother sit between his front feet outside on the deck. Not only that, but he let Tru play with one of his Frisbee shards as he sat there. And if you know Caleb, you know how big a deal that was. So that’s when we knew they’d be OK.
Their relationship has progressed to the point that they now have nightly wrestling sessions, with Tru’s head fitting neatly inside his brother’s mouth. Today heralded another breakthrough: Tru learned how to play tug of war. Caleb is thrilled that Tru can now hang on to the rope to the point that his feet leave the ground when Caleb shakes it. Sure, Caleb has occasionally snapped at Tru to scare him and/or put him in his place. And Tru definitely knows how to yelp like you would not believe in order to summon us to placate him after having the crap scared out of him. Rich and I have actually had minor heart attacks when he does this; his yelping is so dramatic, you’d swear Caleb was eating him alive. Of course, as soon as Tru opens his mouth to scream for help, Caleb usually walks himself to his crate for a preemptive time out. Smart boy, that one.
The sharing of toys is still a work in progress, although for the most part Caleb leaves Tru’s tiny toys alone. There is an almost nightly session of keep-away, though, typically over the smallest bone in the house of their new mid-sized rope (given to them by their Auntie Caren).
Tiny Tru with Tiny TeddyWhile Tru still has a lonnnnnng way to go in making friends with the cats, at least he’s on his way to becoming really well-integrated with Snoops and Caleb. And as soon as he takes a nice, long nap this weekend, I’ll start putting some of the tons of photos I’ve taken up in my Flickr album. In the meantime, here are a few to enjoy.
I wasn’t going to pull her tail, I swear.
Ooh! A kitty!
Hey, big brother.Filed under caleb, dogs, puppy, troubadour hobo
Randomosity on a Monday
Song Lyric of the Day:
You know he’s gonna take away your promised land / Hey good lady he just wants what you got you know / He’ll never stop until he’s taken the lot
Happy Mondays / “Step On“
9:01PM.
The Tiny Terror of South Knoxville
I love my new puppy. I really do. I love everything about him. The way he kisses me and cries/yowls for reassurance when I let him out of the crate every morning. How he hides behind my leg (or Rich’s) when he’s unsure of something. The wrinkly little forehead. The grumbles and snorts he makes whenever he shifts position while sleeping. Hopping at my feet to be picked up. How he stares at and follows Caleb around, with open worship on his face. Hell, even him humping my poor cat, Belle, yesterday was pretty funny (for me, not her). But you know what I don’t love? The biting. Do you know how sharp puppy teeth are? It’s like he’s part fucking piranha. Must break him of that habit soon. Very soon.
I Pulled Another Lemming…
…and set up a Facebook profile. I already like it more than MySpace because the template doesn’t make my eyes bleed. Although I will keep my MySpace page up. Because how else would I contact bands about song lyrics and actually get responses?
But Will We Get the Bird Flu?
We can’t use our grill for the foreseeable future. Seems while we were in Uruguay, a certain Ms. Momma Robin decided to build herself a nice two-bedroom nest in our grill. Two of the three babies survived, and now we are peacefully co-existing with Momma and her two nestlings. Still, I can’t tell you how the thought of using our grill again, even after a very thorough cleaning, weirds me out. “I asked for cheese on my burger, not feathers!” Yuck.
Should’ve Seen Them When I Had the Chance
So I bought Rocco Deluca and the Burden‘s album, I Trust You to Kill Me, recently. I’ve been listening to it nonstop, it’s so good. And kicking myself for not making a point to see the group when they played at Blue Cat’s a few months back. Fun fact: The band is signed to the Ironworks Music label (also love honeyhoney’s “Little Toy Gun”), owned by none other than Kiefer Sutherland. So buy this album or Jack Bauer will kick your ass.
Thar She Blows
I recently got my hair chopped off (back on the 10th). I finally reached the point where it was getting too long for me to really do anything with it. I ended up getting an awesome layered cut, which my stylist (look, Ma, I have a stylist!), Christopher, then ironed straight to within an inch of my hair’s life. After two attempts at letting my hair dry naturally, I have been faithfully blow drying and ironing my hair every night since. It takes anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes each time. And all it took to motivate me was my beloved calling me “Poodle Hair” after I let my hair dry naturally. Thanks again for that, honey. (And many thanks to Caren for introducing me to Christopher.)
Before and after photos taken by Caren with my camera phone.
Filed under puppy
It’s a Boy – Squared!
Song Lyric of the Day:
What a day to absorb / What a day to welcome a baby / And to begin breathing
10:43PM.
Our family is growing this year. My sister and brother-in-law are expecting their first baby this summer. Meet my future nephew, Elliott:
I can’t wait to meet Elliott, especially in light of everything his parents (and our family as a whole) went through last year. I’m going to do the best I can to spoil him rotten, instill in him a love of reading and photography, and teach him how to swear in pig latin.
***
While Rich and I are not adding a human baby to our family mix anytime soon, we did add to our family nonetheless this weekend. Meet our new son, Troubadour Hobo:
Troubadour (Tru for short) is a Bagle, a Basset Hound-Beagle mix. He’s 10 weeks old and weighs about five pounds. Rich and I adopted him from the Monroe County Animal Shelter (MCAS) yesterday.
Adopting a new puppy was not a decision we made lightly. We’ve talked about it off and on for over a year now. The clincher, though, was the week Caleb spent playing with his cousins while we were in Uruguay. To hear Ken and Vanessa tell it, he played non-stop the entire time we were gone (his boy cousins are three and four years old). His big sister, Snoops, is 12 now, and her arthritis precludes her from playing with him the way his younger cousins can. So what to do that wouldn’t upset our family balance too much? Adopt a puppy. Tru is young enough that Snoops accepted him immediately (she would reject an older dog), happily going into mothering mode. Caleb likes him, but is dealing with some slight jealousy issues (read: every toy in the world should belong to Caleb).
Rich and I recently fell in love with a gorgeous pit bull puppy named Billie, but as Billie is a boy, we did not get to adopt him because it’s inadvisable to have pits of the same sex. Lo and behold, Rich was doing some online puppy surfing the other day, and we found ourselves driving to the MCAS yesterday. We recognized Hobo from his picture online and fell in love with him instantly, even though we did look at all the other puppies onsite at the time. The funny thing is that Hobo, as he was named by the shelter, had on a pink collar — he’d mistakenly been identified as a girl. After signing the adoption papers, we noticed some extra baggage attached to his undercarriage and confirmed that the pink-collared Hobo was not a girl at all. So after a second of disappointment at not having a little girl puppy I could at long last dress up (much to Rich’s chagrin), we decided we already loved him too much to turn him back in and wait for a girl puppy. Now I have to find little boy puppy clothes for him (much to Rich’s chagrin).
After a day and a half with his new family, Tru is doing great. He seems fearless, only getting scared once, when Caleb growled at him for playing with his rope (because all toys should belong to Caleb only). Snoops enjoys following him around, making sure he’s OK, while he in turn loves to play with her tail. He is in awe of his big brother, kissing Caleb whenever possible, and putting his paws on Caleb’s face. Which is pretty funny to watch, since Tru’s entire body is the size of Caleb’s head. The cats have already adapted, which we attribute to Caren bringing her puppy, Willow, over often enough that they know what to expect. And how to avoid a puppy. Willow (and her mom) actually came over tonight, which thrilled all our dogs to no end.
I have to admit, the best part of having adopted Tru (aside from his fantastic portability), is that, so far, he seems to love me more than he loves Rich. Having been tossed aside by Snoops once Rich and I got together, and with Caleb worshipping the ground his Papa walks on, it’s a great feeling.
*Note to Vanessa: It’s not a couch! But he IS brown and he IS a permanent fixture in our house. 🙂
Filed under baby, pet rescue, puppy, puppy adoption, ultrasound
