On puppy #2.

As I write this, puppy #2 is in the pen, whining and upset. I have only devoted the last two hours to his health and feeding and welfare, and this is obviously not enough.

Oh, good; now he's just moaning and pouting.

Maybe I can finally write this and have a cup of coffee.

My poor wife is ill this morning, and has had to stay in bed a while. It makes it harder for the Divide and Conquer strategy that has been useful for mealtimes. The old guy, Tralfaz, despite being only a bit smaller than Clifford or Digby, has never been much on mealtimes. He's always picked at his food and hardly ever finished a size-and-age-appropriate serving. I wonder sometimes how he got to be this big. It couldn't have been just the treats.

But little guy, the well-named Nipper, eats like a freaking Shop-Vac. He sucks down more than he should and comes back for seconds and thirds. Mrs. Key finally got a couple of those puzzle bowls to get him to slow down, maybe give his stomach a chance to say, "Yo, dude! Enough!" Even so, he'll just eat until he pukes if we let him. And he looks as thin as a greyhound. If we hadn't gotten him a thorough deworming, I'd be worried.

So this morning, after Nipper had eaten, while Tralfaz was sighing his way through another disappointing meal (no cheese again...), I had to keep Nipper in another room to keep him from going nuts, because he will harass Fazzy with noises and turn the big guy completely off his food. I heard Tralfaz slump on the floor, the sign of resignation, and I peeked out to see if he'd eaten anything at all. Hungry Hungry Zippo, seeing his chance, bolted between my legs and launched himself right into Fazzy's bowl. He couldn't have even looked in it first; it could have been full of live piranhas. Wouldn't matter; he would have eaten them.

So little guy is in the pen now in a time-out, which is totally unfair, because he sees himself as the Harry to Fazzy's Dudley. Dudley gets this mound of food he can't even eat, and all Harry does is try to get a little sustenance and he winds up back under the stairs. Can anyone blame him for biting hairs out of Tralfaz's tail?

As for Tralfaz, he's pouting in the hall, having been chased out again by his fear of land shark. It's nice and cool this morning, but he can't get a walk with me, because I can't leave the kid alone or he'll go bonkers and wake up my sick wife. So everything is ducky this morning.

Look, I love the little pup, and I know he's just a baby, but the rampaging id can be a little hard to take some days. This is one of them.

*sigh*

Why couldn't I have been some slob on the porch with a lot of land who just chucks his dogs out in the wilderness and ignores them all day long? "Okay, boys, here's the new kid, try not to kill him, off you go." But nooooo, you try that around here, they give you a summons.

On a related note, I see that Bissell has come out with a vacuum cleaner that not only picks up pet hair well, it's got a beater roll that supposedly will not get hair tangled on it. This is a major step forward in appliance technology. We have an LG that is great for getting dog hair, until hairs get wound up around the brushes, at which time it is like trying to eat cereal with a lollipop. I have to cut and pull all the hair off to make it work properly again.

Like that moment in 2001 with the monolith.

We have 1.5 large hairy dogs right now. If this vacuum works as advertised, I want to see the Nobel people do the right thing next year.