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.

SAM 9000

I'm really hard on cell phones. They typically only last one year. Last year I was given a particularly sturdy-looking Samsung phone. Things were going well with the phone for about six months, then my daughter decided to waterboard the darn thing. She handed me the damp phone after she had accidentally dropped it in the toilet. Hmmmm. After it dried out, it worked - sort of - sometimes. Occasionally the screen would go entirely blank. And when i really needed to make a call, it would fritz-out, as if to say "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that".






















Then, it fell out of my pocket into one of our lawn chairs - unnoticed. The next morning, I retrieved it after the rainstorm. I thought it was a goner. After several attempts at resuscitation, I resorted to setting it on top of a lamp. I hoped the heat would evaporate the moisture inside the phone. As so often happens with parents, I ran to take care of a false-alarm child emergency. When I returned - the smell of scorched plastic awaited me. I grabbed my hot phone and saw that it was warped and the external LCD dispaly was melted off. Not good. I sprinted out the door to get diapers and wine - with my smokin' phone in hand.
The screen was as white as the new-fallen snow.
As I cruised the supermarket aisles, a Christmas miracle occurred!! The screen gradually faded in and I could see the clock emerging from the digital fog. I tried dialing, and lo and behold, it worked! Except for the number six on the keypad, it works fine. Hallelujah!

What am I doing here?!!!!

Scoobie is a bike ridin' machine now. Time to indoctrinate the younger one. Here he is on his Christmas bike:






















We got this ride in between freezes. The temperature is supposed to dip into the teens by Friday. This blog is called "Someplacewarm" not "Coldasawitchesteet". I wish that we were in our favorite Caribbean spot, but we are in Austin, Texas - which shouldn't have temperatures like Bismarck, North Dakota - but this year it does.