Introducing..um..the Puppy with No Name
Ok, I'll have to admit it: Having Dino over here with us for a couple of weeks was a kind of test. We were trying to see how QBit would react to having another bichon around the house. And the two of them had such a good time tearing around the place together (and sacking out in a pile when they got tired; see my entry for November 27, 2006) that we figured it was a go: We would add another puppy to the mix. So yesterday afternoon, Jimi Henton drove up with her six available puppies, to allow us to choose the one we wanted.
We closed off the laundry room from the rest of the house and just let them all run around. It was puppy pandemonium for a solid hour, and that all by itself was great fun. Carol very much wanted a lap dog, so we sat on the floor and paid very close attention to which puppies crawled into our laps unbidden. QBit is very playful, but he's not a natural lap dog and prefers to sit on the back of the couch, ideally where he can lick the top of my head. He's also on the big side (now 16 pounds 8 ounces) and we hoped our second would be smaller, more like Dino.
Of the six puppies, only three were lapseekers, and of those three, one stood out: If there was a lap available, he would make a beeline for it. He was also the smallest male of the litter, now four months old. Unlike Dino, who was a little skittish and seemed afraid of me, even after three weeks in the house, the littlest puppy actually seemed to prefer sitting in my lap to doing anything else. Another hour and Carol and I nodded to one another: He was the one. After Jimi packed up all the others (along with Dino) and went home, we immediately gave our new puppy a bath and brushed him. He has a much worse tear staining problem than QBit did, but that's a treatable condition, and tends to get better as the puppy matures.
We're still stuck for a name, but we're working on that. In the meantime, here are a couple of pictures of little What's-His-Name to get you started. At some point I'll add an album to my online photo gallery, but for the moment I'm thinking of him as Our Christmas Puppy. We're going to have to give him back to Jimi while we're in Chicago unless I can figure out a way to get him there, but for the moment, empty laps are scarce around here, and that's the way it should be.
