A Very Very Cute Puppy

So, now there's the dog, our dog.  Our puppy actually.  Theo.  He's very cute.  I need to say that at the start.  He's very very cute.  But I also need to say he's more work than Kanha was when she first came home.  Or maybe that's my version of forgetting labor pains -- I have forgotten the initial trauma of sleep-interrupted nights and climbing and crawling on, over, and out of everything.  

In any case, this puppy isn't easy.  But, of course, he's cute.  He pees at least a dozen times a day, as if he's the one who's going to be having labor pains soon.  In fact, I think it's just that he wants to show the big boys (i.e. big dogs) who he is so he leaves his little mark all about.  In addition, if all goes well, he poops three or four times a day.  How can this small a dog -- just around twelve pounds, looks like an oversized rat when he's soaking wet, eats just two small bowls of food each day -- have that much to get rid of?  But I have to remember, when he's dry, with his swills of colored fur -- white and black and gray and tan and even a little orange -- tufting out all over the place, growing over his eyes, his tail always erect in a confident close parenthesis (our dog trainer, Mallory, is constantly saying, "Oh my, what a confident tail he has!"), he's really really cute.  

But when he's finished pooping -- after I've walked him around the yard for five or so minutes for the eighth time of the day (perhaps it doesn't sound that long but I suggest that you try it, every single day), and it's only noon (the perils of working from home...) -- he gets so excited that he turns me into a human tug toy. (Tug toys, for the puppy-uninitiated, are long, tightly woven pieces of cloth that one spends a ridiculous amount of money on so that the puppy will have something, anything, to chew on other than all the other things that a puppy thinks are his tug/chew toys -- electric cords, my undies, Kanha's socks.  After I -- actually, Theo -- went through an $80 Apple power cord -- yes, $80 -- does Apple have us under their Zen-like thumbs or what?  -- I didn't care how much that silly woven piece of cloth cost, I was buying it.)  

But I digress.  His number two achievement behind him, Theo and I cross the threshold of the front door and instantly he's all over me.  My coat, my scarf, my boots, my slippers, my pant legs.  Mallory says all I have to do is turn away when he jumps and bites, but how do I turn away from myself?  Holes pop up everywhere.  Perhaps there's a silver lining here -- I get a new puppy, I just absolutely have to buy an entire new wardrobe.  But he really is so very cute.