New dog - old tricks

ME - "What do you want for Christmas?"
SCOOBIE - "A puppy"
ME - "Anything else?
SCOOBIE - "No, just a puppy. But, one I can hold and pet. A small one"
ME - "Well, I don't think we're getting a puppy this year. Is there anything else you could want."
SCOOBIE - "No, just a puppy"

Crap!

So, Cheech searched all the dog rescue sites in our area. She found a cute, little, white, poodly thing named "Rasta", listed as 18 months old, 12 lbs., house trained, Maltese Poodle mix, good with kids, etc.. Besides the cute web picture, the name "Rasta" is what got our attention (we had a dog named "Irie" who passed on last summer). So we trekked all the way down to San Antonio to pick him up.
We renamed him "Ziggy" so as not to offend our Rasta friends.
He was beautifully behaved and sat in our laps the whole way home.

At home we were playing along and - oops - poop on the floor. Hmm.
And then my son dropped a fork on the floor. I almost lost a knuckle when I tried to get it back from Ziggy. Not good. It looked as if Ziggy might go back to foster care.

I was worried about the kids around this dog. But he played so well with them and never showed any aggression. We kept him on a leash in case. He was perfect. My son grabbed stuff out of the dog's mouth before I could stop him - no problem. Scoobie accidentally sat on the dog's head - no problem. I tried to retrieve a toy Elmo from the dog - problem!!

That evening the dog jumped up and slept on my daughter's bed all night. In the middle of the night, I had to rush into the kids' room to calm Scoobie, who was yelling in her sleep. I was really scared about the dog around my somnambular daughter. Ziggy stood at the corner of the bed and growled at me. Then he laid back down just in time for Scoobie (still asleep) to kick him. He calmly readjusted his position, and rested his head on the blanket. Okay. So the dog is only aggressive towards me. Interesting.

With some coaching from Cheech, the dog and I are working on our "issues". We think that there may have been an aggressive guy in Ziggy's past.

I have yet to see the slightest aggression towards my kids from Ziggy. My son has been his 2 1/2 year old self with the dog - pulling, pushing, grabbing Ziggy's food. The dog seems fine. Just don't make any threatening moves toward the kids, or Ziggy will chop off your ankles.

I just took the picture above. It's not a very good one - but I realized that we haven't taken any pix of the dog - and I wanted to post one. He should look better when his hair grows in (it was shaved off), and someone isn't trying to photograph him while he is trying to sleep.

Ziggy's Heritage
We were walking the dog a few days ago when someone stopped us to ask if Ziggy was a Coton de Tulier. We said we thought he was a Maltipoo. They insisted that he looks like a Coton.
We have checked it out, and it appears that he is a Coton. Cotons are a breed that emerged in the wild in Madagascar. Cheech and I have always joked about a mythical time, when wild poodles roamed the earth - but apparently it is true.