The new family member skulking about our house these days

Posted by jdg | Wednesday, February 21, 2007 |

The last post being a fine example of my patented windbaggery, I am going to keep this short and sweet: we went and got ourselves a dog. I would like to introduce Wendell. At the shelter they called him "Buddy." He is a ten-month-old German shorthaired pointer, and the shelter people think he was dumped on the streets and vacant lots of Detroit by a hunter from the suburbs because he wasn't a very good hunter. Wendell is supposedly the old-German word for "wanderer." He is wonderful with Juniper. He is letting her cover him in blankets and wipe his "owies" with baby wipes on the floor right now. At two, she is clearly smarter than he is. He pooped on the floor of my office yesterday while I was putting her down for a nap, which bothered me far less than I would have thought. My tolerance for feces is exceptionally high these days.

In the spirit of keeping this brief, I will leave you with these two things: (1) in the future, I promise not to write too much about the dog; (2) I may break that promise if the hijinks of pottytraining two creatures under one roof proves moderately entertaining.

I grew up with dogs. I haven't lived with one since I left my parents' house at eighteen. I can't tell you how amazing it is to have a dog put his head on my knees and look up at me and to know that he is mine. Now I need to go vacuum up the dog hairs before Wood gets home from work.