Sandy
Okay, so Rob and I thought about getting Ally a dog a long time ago. We talked about it, and we (mostly I) set some pretty un-realistic conditions: must be housebroken, don't want a puppy - they are too excitable, must be small enough that Ally can play with it, and it can use our cat-door dog-door, etc. We were looking at shelters so we could get an older dog. The only problem is that the dogs there are all large. People just don't take small dogs to a shelter very much. We kept looking, but not very hard.

Then Rob got a wild hair up his butt the other day and decided we needed to look harder. I think it was because we watched some neighbor dogs break out of their house and go running away, and we helped round them up. One of the dogs was a Yorkie, and Ally was excited and thought it was "my Duke" (Duke is my mom's not-a-dog Yorkie). So I started looking at shelters again. I was rudely told that the one in a neighboring town doesn't adopt any dogs out to families with children under 10. What a load of shit! Do they want their dogs adopted or not? (...further rant edited out. You're welcome.) Needless to say, I was pissed off. Anyway, Rob thought that since Ally likes Mom's dog so much we should get a Yorkie. Much too small. Much too excitable, much too annoying, much too expensive, and you pretty much have to get a puppy and house train it. I don't have time for that. And Rob has more important things to do (I'll wait while you wash the sarcasm off your monitor. Go ahead...) He wanted me to start looking at buying a puppy. I drug (dragged?) my feet. I'm glad.

Friday night, he called me from work and asked if he could bring a puppy home. A guy he works with has a sister that rescued a dog. She gave it her shots, and house trained it, but can't keep it. Rob could bring it home, and if it didn't work out he could take it back with him on Sunday when he worked again. So I told him to go ahead and we'd try it.

The puppy is probably about 4-5 months old, female, a mutt of some sort (my guess is terrier, boxer mix, but that's a wild-ass guess. If you have any better guesses, let me know. Click the picture over there to see more), IS house trained and leash trained, is smart enough to figure out the dog door, was loved by Ally, and rarely barks. But, she is a puppy. She does get excited, and jump and nip occasionally. but not at Ally. It seems we're keeping her. Since Saturday was so gorgeous, we spent most of the day outside playing with her. She loves to curl up on your lap for a nap. In fact, she's not allowed on the couch, so if we sit on the couch, she jumps up and grabs at you until you sit on the floor to wring her neck, then she curls up in your lap. Ally got jealous once. Sandy (Yes, that's the dog's name. We're not original, and that's all we came up with) was laying on Rob, and Ally came over and said "I want to sit on your lap" She never wants to sit sit on Rob's lap without doing something else - like reading or something. But when she got the dog moved, she did sit there for a while, just to prove that she had the right I guess.


As I said, Ally loved the dog. Here are a couple of things we heard quite a bit this weekend:
1. puppy, what are you doing?
2. No puppy, that's my couch.
3. I'm happy to see you puppy
4. Down, Sandy
5. Mister puppy (if she was a he, that might have been her/his name)
6. chase me!

The dog is very good about letting Ally manhandle her. She is 14 1/2 pounds, so a little bit too big for Ally to pick up. But Ally will lay her head on Sandy's belly and give her huge hugs and "tickle" her belly. She also likes to wave her hands around and run about to that the dog gets all hyper. This is always accompanied by screaming. Ally was wired all weekend. At some point, I considered ripping my ears off my head, just so the loudness would stop.

The dog is learning "go lay down in your bed". (Of course we bought it a bed. Because we don't have anything else to spend our money on. And she was free after all. Besides, she thought Ally's little couch was a perfect place to sleep, and Ally disagreed. The funniest thing was that we brought the bed home, and Ally sat in it, so the dog sat on her couch. Ally freaked out, and got up to go to move the dog, and the dog went and laid down on her bed. I could see the self-satisfaction on the dog's face. I think Ally learned her lesson) I think she's pretty smart and definitely trainable. It'll just take time. This morning, Sandy went upstairs and laid in her bed after Rob left, until I got up to get ready. She's improving every day.

I just realized that I've called it "the dog" and it a lot up there. It got on my nerves a little bit this (extended) weekend. I do like her and she's very cuddly. And very cute.