Dorothy Meets Lily and Avery

My sister, Meredith, and her two girls, Lily and Avery, came for a visit on their way up to Maine last weekend.  This was Dorothy's first experience with house guests, and it was one she would very much like to repeat!  Dorothy is a big fan of CONSTANT EVENING ENTERTAINMENT, and she also likes new people and new experiences.  Add to this the fact that she adores all children, and you can imagine that she was very pleased with the visit.

Dorothy first surprised me by walking at a fast clip several blocks down to the parking garage to meet her cousins.  [Her new thing these days is to walk beautifully on our 8:00 pm-ish walk, and I almost hesitate to mention it as I don't want to jinx anything.]  We then walked them back to our apartment, and Dorothy only sat down once!

Here she is giving her cousins a thorough inside greeting.  She hadn't known when we met them on the street that they were going to follow us home, so she was pleasantly surprised.

Since Dorothy was a bit too interested in the content of all the suitcases, they were stored behind a closed door in the study.  Sometimes, however, the door was open and a bulldogge had to slip in to see what was what.  Here is one of those times.  Dorothy was very keen on Avery's new Toms shoes, but Avery was just as keen at keeping the Toms away from Dorothy.  Good move, Avery.  Here Dorothy is helping Avery unpack:

And here is Dorothy, very pleased with the air mattress in the living room.  She thought it was a fine place to spend an evening with the girls!

Dorothy also enjoyed having the girls introduce her to their favorite TV shows.  Here she is, hanging with her homies:

Wot?

And here is Dorothy trading secrets with Lily on the cat-scratching chair:

And posing with Avery back in the living room on the couch.  Don't they both look lovely?! Can't you see the family resemblance?

Dorothy is already looking forward to their next visit!

It's Not Easy Being Green

In case you are wondering, Dorothy would like you all to know that she leads a very difficult life.  While people get to do their business in pristine air-conditioned bathrooms, perched on porcelain, and perhaps with good reading material at hand, Dorothy is forced to pound the hot pavement in search of a good spot.  Such a search and such a pounding involves moving her Very Own Legs, and sullying her Very Own Pink Paw Pads. 

This is unacceptable.  But since I yell and scold if she should do her biz-ness inside, causing her to run to Mr. Snacks for comfort and tuck her head under his arm, outside she must go!  Frequently.

What is even more horrible, apparently, oh woe is Dorothy!, is that after she walks a half-block and finds a good spot and performs adequately, she then – get this – is expected to walk back home!  Are you not outraged?!  Dorothy certainly is.

So now when she walks the half-block home with perhaps a break to sit, and then a break to be praised by passers-by, and then a break to kiss passers-by, and then a break to roll over on her back for a small child, and then a break to wrassle with a passing dog, and then a break to be startled by the sound of a car wheel crushing garbage, and then a break to protest and lie down flat on her belly on the sidewalk…well then, as you can imagine, a girl like Dorothy is plumb-tuckered out.

She will manage to walk in the first door, and walk up the six or seven steps to sit on the top step for a treat while I unlock the inside door.  But after such an excursion that I have just put her through, do you think she can walk up the hall to our apartment? 

The answer is no.  She most certainly cannot.  A bulldogge is simply too tired for hall-walking.  And so Dorothy is now in the habit of collapsing in exhaustion after we get inside our building.  She flops down on the carpet and will even roll over on her side in the middle of the hall and lie there all dehydrated damsel-like.

Yesterday, I left her lying there, and went into my apartment and got my camera and returned to my battered bulldogge.  My going into the apartment and letting the door close behind me caused her to roll over from her side to her belly, but she still was not going to get up on her own four legs on her own accord.  So here is Dorothy, oh so exhausted:

Will not someone invest in a red wagon?

How about a palanquin like Queen Victoria used to travel in?

A rickshaw mayhap?

All together now:  oh poor Dorothy!!

Meta Posy

Posy is rethinking her previously negative stance on this whole interweb business.

The Early Bird Gets The Worm

Dorothy is still pretty much an early riser.  Although every once in a while she will sleep in till 7 -- and once she even slept until 8:00! -- in general 6:00 - 6:15 is her favorite time to wake up and get the show on the road.  The show being me.  Her preferred method of waking me up is to either start licking my face and ears with her hot tongue, or perform a body slam on my face.  Neither is a very gentle awakening.

The first month I had to rush her out the door the minute she awoke like she was a bomb about to explode.  Nowadays, we still go out first thing, but it is not quite a matter of life or death.  As you know, Dorothy is not a walker, so some mornings we don't make it all the way to the park.  She'll do her business and then want to return home for a tasty breakfast.  If we do go all the way to the park, though, this is our view upon entering it:

It's a lovely city park on the whole, although I do have to make sure Dorothy doesn't run over and leap on to the few people who are sleeping in it.

Here is Dorothy looking about, seeing what dogs are out already, or what doormen might be willing to ooh and ahh over her.  She is also deciding what corner of a building she should choose on which to read her morning's p-mail:

And then we walk the 1.5 blocks home.  If I'm lucky, she walks the whole way with or without coaxing.  If I'm not lucky, she will go on strike and sit down and not budge.  Here she is, having made it home, waiting for a piece of kibble on our doorstep:

Good girl, Dorothy!

The Southern Cousins Are Coming

But hopefully not via Segway!

Dorothy will soon get to meet her two cousins from the South!  They don't know it yet, but she fully plans to join them on the blow-up air mattress while they are here.  Sleepover!!! She is also busy trying to decide whose pillow she will share, Lily's or Avery's?  Luckily, they will be staying for two nights, so there will be time to rest her large snoring bulldogge head on each cousin's pillow!  Lucky cousins!  Little do they know that while in Philadelphia, the first sight that will greet their eyes when they open them in the morning is this:

Although Dorothy's repose in that picture is really a bit misleading.  Before they see that sight, they will feel a hot tongue cleaning their ears, and a gangly bulldogge body draped across their necks.  And when they see that face, it will more likely than not be coming toward them at a speed of about 60 mph.  Oh what fun!

Said The Spider To The Fly....

I have started to be able to do a bit of knitting every now and then, since Dorothy has become quite fond of her morning naps.  The other day I got Dorothy settled in her bed on my bed all princess and the pea-like, and sat down to do some knitting while listening to NPR.  All was going well until I felt a menacing presence from above and to the right.  I looked up, and:  duh, duh duhhhhhhhh!:

Evil has arrived:

Posy is drawn to yarn like a moth to a flame.  This is problematic, since it isn't enough that she play with the yarn, or pounce on it or bat it with a paw:  no, she must needs eat the yarn.  She's like a zombie going after brains.  Is that yarn you have?  Then Get. It. In. Mah. Belleh!!

When I knit, therefore, I always have to keep an eye on where she is in relation to my knitting. She is not above doing an innocent act either, and I am not below falling for it. She will come up to me all purring and sweet looking, perhaps sticking out the tip of her tiny pink tongue for cute emphasis.  She will climb into my lap, very much Lucy with the football:  I will not touch your knitting this time; I'm just going to sit here and purr on your lap and gaze at you in admiration.  So then I am all knit, knit, knit; and she is all purr, purr, purr.  Until:  ATTACK!  She can stand it no longer!  She must attack and kill that impudent sweater sleeve and the yarn snake that is attached to it!!  Arrrgghhhh!

So when I am knitting, and Posy suddenly de-lurks, thusly,

I know it is going to end in tears...or at the very least, one heck of a tangle.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

When I thought that Dorothy might have to spend a few days in her crate wearing the cone of shame, I took the partition out of her crate to make it larger.  As it turns out, however, Dorothy was not even remotely interested in her stitches or her surgery site, so she ended up only wearing the cone of shame for one night.

I have yet to put Dorothy's crate partition back in.  For one thing, she has had a growth spurt lately, so when she stretches out, she really does take up the whole crate.  But I've also discovered that with the partition out, I can put her favorite bed in the back of the crate, with her quilt from her Aunt Elsie and a few toys in the front of the crate--we call that area her "front porch."  So she now has a nice cuddly bed in there for snuggling in, and then a nice front porch area for storage and for stretching out in (if it turns out it's for piddling in, I'm putting the partition back in stat....)

But now that the crate is all nice and roomy, complete with handmade quilt, Sir Plum has decided that it is a worthy place for him to spend an evening, and indeed a whole night.

Plum, looking a wee bit sheepish:

Despite harboring some initial reservations about the spot, after spending a few nights there, Plum decided that he Liked It Very Much Indeed.  So one evening when I returned from running errands and opened Dorothy's crate to let her out, Dorothy made the critical error of not exiting from her crate immediately.  For while she was still dawdling in her bed, Plum decided to settle down into his spot on the crate's front porch.  Which brings us to:

I call this picture, Guess Who's Stuck?

Plum's eyes are closed, and he's all comfy on the quilt.  How peaceful, you might think!  How sweet!  But Dorothy soon decided that she would prefer to snooze on the couch.  Instead of just standing up and leaping out the door of the crate, though, she let her nerves get the best of her and sat hemming and hawing in the bed, giving Plum time to stretch out his paw and hold it all ready, talons primed for some slapping.  Dorothy moved forward an inch, Plum air slapped in front of her nose!  Dorothy began to move--oh! air slap!  Dorothy sat back down.  She stood up--air slap, air slap, hair away from snout slap! Dorothy sat back down.

Finally I came to her rescue and pulled her out while blocking Plum's punches.  I'm not sure what the moral of this story is, although I feel it has one somewhere.  Don't let Purple Sirs nap on your front porch?  When your mother opens the door of your crate, exit the crate immediately and give her a proper greeting?  Invest in a bulldogge-size suit of armor?  Hmmm, I think the second one has a nice ring to it.