Daybook

A certain four-legged somebody ambled into my office a little while ago and presented me with one of my bedroom slippers. Every man’s dream, right? A dog who brings his slippers and his evening paper? Except that it was 10:30 AM and I’d been up and dressed for four hours…and the slipper had teeth marks in it. I grabbed for the slipper…and he expertly dodged and headed back for the door at flank speed, glancing over his shoulder to make sure I was in pursuit.

Let’s just say we don’t let him anywhere near the newspaper.

Heh. Meet Dash. I tagged him Redball at first (see my entry for July 12, 2009) because he was the “red” puppy out of that litter (puppies in a litter are often color coded with collar ribbons or a daub of nail polish on their ears) and because he liked to chew on the red ball on the mini-bungee holding his Lixit bottle in place. But puppies eventually tell you their true names, and with Dash it became clear from his head-down, pedal-to-the-metal running style that he had lots in common with young Dashiell “Dash” Parr, particularly when his pack was in play mode or when the pack was not, but he wanted to be. Like this morning, with my slipper.

For now, indeed, we have a pack. As most of you know, we fostered a mamma dog and her litter of three puppies when their owner was hospitalized, and we decided to keep one of the puppies. We also have Jack, AKA Jackpot and Jackie Gleason, a very large three-year-old male bichon whom I myself have handled in the show ring. Dash makes four, and it’s been interesting to observe pack dynamics and the ongoing discussion over pack hierarchy. QBit is the sometimes challenged but still unvanquished boss. Although clipped, he’s the oldest and the most muscular, and his muscle evidently generates enough testosterone to keep the other guys in their places. QBit can flip and pin 10-pound Aero without half trying, and although Jack is larger and a little heavier than QBit, he’s far less muscular and just naturally submissive. The dynamic most in play is the one between Aero and Jack: Aero would like to be the boss but won’t be any time soon, and Jack seems to understand that even though he’s lost some weight he still has ten pounds on Aero and doesn’t seem interested in playing the dominance game.

And Dash, well, he still has full puppy privileges. He can crawl on top of QBit and lie down, or take bones away from both Aero and Jack if their bones are the ones he wants. In fact, Dash treats both Aero and Jack as babysitters and sometimes as just another pair of stuffed toys; he’ll grab one of Jack’s ears and pull as hard as he can while Jack stolidly stands there, waiting patiently for the young brat to get bored. Aero and Dash play a sort of gymnastic “flip” game that consists of Aero flipping Dash over while Dash swats back at Aero with his front paws. We’re guessing that Aero is trying to get a jump on the pack hierarchy question while the brat is still small enough to flip, but we’re also guessing that a mature Dash will outweigh Aero by at least five pounds, and an unclipped Dash may not just roll over for Aero out of simple seniority.

Dash’s pigment is improving as time passes (he’s now 13 weeks old) and Carol thinks he’s definitely show-quality, if not as generally perfect as Aero. One oddness is that his eyes reflect a luminous blue in a camera flash, which I’ve never seen in a bichon before. (Aero’s eyes reflect gold, and QBit’s green.) Most significantly, Dash is taking to the litterbox quite well, and although he still has accidents, he’s better on potty discipline at 13 weeks than either Aero or Jack are as adults. He’s noisy, confident, and extremely playful, and having a puppy in the house from six and a half weeks is an experience we’ve never had before and may never have again, so we’re paying attention, taking pictures, and enjoying it as much as we can.

Zoom! There he goes again! (And my other slipper is now missing…)

Heh. Told ya! (See my entry for July 1, 2009.) Keep puppies long enough, and you just don’t want to give them back. And so it was that Carol and I wrote a check for Redball the other day, just before his eight-week birthday, and added him to the Duntemann bichon pack. (The photo above is earlier, from just before he was seven weeks old.) “Redball” is what (in the publishing industry) we call a working title. His real name may be something else entirely, and we won’t know until he tells us. As of this morning he weighs four pounds two ounces, and is gaining a little less than an ounce a day.

The other two puppies have also been sold and are on their way to new homes, one in Albuquerque and another in Ohio. Bella (their mother) is back home now, though for health reasons her owner is looking to reduce the size of her own pack and is trying to find adoptors for Bella and several other bichons.

Red was definitely missing his mother and brothers last night, and even though he had a cozy Sherpa bag on the nightstand right next to Carol’s side of the bed, he fussed until 10:30 or so. Carol got up twice to take him to his litter pan to potty, and he’s doing pretty well in the housebreaking department for one so young. Pan/pad training works: QBit was pad-trained from an early age and rarely has accidents in the house. (Aero, well, is not so well-trained…)

Although we won’t know for sure for another month or so, it looks like Red will be show-quality, and Carol is considering showing him. (He’ll probably make his show debut at next year’s Bichon Frise Nationals in Indianapolis.) In the meantime, we’re happy to have him romping around on the laundry room floor, grabbing QBit’s hind leg and jumping on Aero’s back. The big guys have been extremely tolerant of Red’s rowdiness, especially Aero, who’s taken the brunt of the biting. Red has a habit of grabbing the end of Aero’s tail and hanging on for the ride while Aero tries to flee. Even so, Aero will roll on his back and bat at Red with his front paws, trying to be a good sport.

I’ll post better and more current photos as we get them. He rarely stands still long enough to get a good shot, especially with the latency of our digital cameras. We do, however, have some wonderful movies. They’re only small like this for a few weeks. We’re trying our best to enjoy every minute.

Carol and I took four days away in our RV and it was just the thing–more on Field Day later–but we came home to word that one of our friends in the local bichon club had been taken to the hospital very late Monday night. It’s nothing life-threatening, but she’ll be there probably until the weekend. So it was that Carol and I volunteered to host a past champion bichon bitch and her litter of three six-week-old puppies until next Sunday.

We’ve seen and held younger bichon puppies in the past, but we’ve never cared for puppies this young for any length of time. We got Mr. Byte and Chewy at 8 weeks, and both QBit and Aero older than that. As I write this it’s been 24 hours and we’re both a little pooped. We set up an exercise pen in our laundry room over a layer of old towels, with a kennel for Bella and the puppies. They were in the process of being weaned when they came to us, and we’re feeding them Fromm’s small-format kibble with a protein supplement called Puppy Gold. (They still nurse a little when Bella lets them.) We also put a puppy litter box in the exercise pen, and (remarkably) the puppies are trying their best to use it, though one in particular is still a little unclear on the concept. (He puts his front feet in the pan and then pees over the edge.)

Six-week puppies are something to watch. Their lives consist of sleep punctuated by (short) periods of furious kinetic activity. Carol and I take them out of the pen several times a day and let them run around the laundry room until they tire themselves out–after which they’ll sleep together in a pile for another three hours. They’re not especially coordinated, and don’t really walk well. They run by something I’d almost call hopping, and generally end up falling over on the linoleum, looking sheepishly around them for a moment before launching off in a different direction. We’re trying to get them socialized and used to close contact with people so that they can be placed when they’re old enough. All of them are probably show quality (it’s still a little hard to tell on things like pigment) and although one of them is bouncier than the other two (he’s the one on the left in the photo) all three are happy, friendly, and extremely playful.

It’s fun having puppies around again, but there’s lots to do here and I think we’ll gladly hand them back when their little vacation is up this weekend. I still have three biggish chapters worth of copyedits to read by the Fourth, and other work has piled up in the meantime. Besides, there’s a sort of Point of No Return with puppies: Keep them too long, and yup, you just don’t want to return them.