rhapsodic.org is a weblog by Valette Keller

Olive, Jesus Dog

I seemed to have lost my voice somewhere in one of Thursdays night's dreams. Yesterday morning the entire area where my voice had been was traumatized and in pain.

I only noticed my voice was MIA when attempting to encourage Olive to go outside despite her being full of sleep at 6am. As I squeaked out some gravelly noises - I can't possibly call them words - she sat six feet from the open door and tilted her head this way and that, back and forth, trying to determine when I learned all of that Klingon.

Olive is looking less monkey-ish and more otter-like these days. In the (3? 4?) months we've had her, her nose has grown in, her legs sprouted like weeds, and her torso stretched like putty.

I expect the vet to tell us on Monday that she's now well over 10 pounds, which is a lot considering she wasn't even 2lbs when I first brought her home.

Her ears still flop at their tips and her tail still curls over her hind end, both of which I hope stay floppy into adulthood.

Which isn't to say that living with a puppy is all sunshine and butterflies and Cute Overload. Blue Heelers are herding breeds, and she gets really upset if Steve and I are in separate rooms. She likes to run right under our feet in annoying attempts to keep the pack together.

She's peed on the bed a few times, including twice last weekend when she also managed to pee on the ironing. All at the same time. I'm pretty sure these were out of spite due to her disrupted schedule from the long weekend. Which doesn't excuse the five extra loads of laundry I had to do because of her precious puppy urine.

I keep expecting a middle name to become apparent, but all that has surfaced so far is a string of curses and the occasional "Puppy Butt." Because that's how we do terms of endearment in this house.