the hidden place and the other time

I had opened the front blinds so I could vacuum; we usually leave them closed as Pip likes to let us know whenever there is anyone in the cul de sac, which she thinks of as Hers. She'll sit on the back of the couch and watch out the window all day long if we let her. A few minutes ago, this happened:

Pip: Someone's in the street! Bark bark BARK!
Boone: Pip is barking, must relay the message! *goes into a paroxysm of barking that quickly resolves into actual howling*
Me: Hilarious, dogs. Shut it. *gets up*
Boone: *shuts it*
Pip: *fails to shut it*
Me: *goes downstairs*
Pip, the moment she sees me: Bark? Errrr.
Me: You just lost window privileges, dog.
Pip: *rolls over on back, looks cute* That was...Some Other Dog! Not me! I'm cute and sweet and I would never bark like a mad thing!
Me: So where is this Some Other Dog?
Pip: ...invisible?
Me: Good try. *closes shades*
Pip: *follows me up the stairs and throws herself at my feet, sighing* I am SO DEPRIVED.

I think the st00pid-happy look on Boone's face really says it all.

SO pleased with the hounds right now. I just went for a walk with both of them, implemented Brilliant Idea (two leashes the same length, Humans Are Unstable lessons), and I suddenly had two dogs, both walking on loose leashes, with the least amount of rioting necessary, in a reasonable approximation of heel. (Boone a tiny bit ahead, Pip a bit behind.) They did almost everything right, including aforementioned loose leashes and minimum of rioting, as well as sitting before crossing roads. So, so pleased. Makes up for this morning's Puppy Riot in a big way. We even passed Big Barky Police Dog's yard without much fuss.

Very happy with puppies now. I have an errand to run, and they'll get to run around afterwards and then they and I will have a shower. Right now, I'm letting them run around the backyard and get filthy, because they deserve it.

Argh. Dogs.

Okay, I did discover that Pip, when by herself and once I'd expressed to her that Humans Are Unstable in terms she really understood (changing direction randomly helps) is really good at walking on the leash. She walks on a loose leash and in the heel position and oh my goodness I was pleased with her once we'd gone a little ways. Must just get her to do that all the time so I can walk her and Boone together more easily.

(It's also about time to buy her a training collar; I need to remember to measure her neck, since she's such a wrestler-shaped dog.)

We're currently in the phase of The Magic Bell Always Opens The Door, though, which makes life interesting in some ways. The Magic Bell is the bell we have hung by the back door that the dogs are supposed to ring to let the humans know they want to go out. Part of potty training is, when the bell is rung, to always go to the door, put the dog that's rung the bell and is waiting patiently by the door on a leash, and go outside with said dog and let them do whatever they need to do, then bring them right back inside.

However, there is a phase with the Magic Bell where the dog has discovered that ringing the Magic Bell means that the door opens, and this is new and interesting power. So the dog rings it about every five minutes, just for novelty's sake. It's important to keep up with it, no matter how frustrating it gets, because the phase does end after a week or two. Supposedly.

Pip has gotten a lot better about actually going when I take her out, having mastered the art of the courtesy tinkle, so she spends less time in the crate. But last night, man. I was attempting to write a sex scene involving four characters, and every five minutes, Pip was ringing the Magic Bell. So I would get a couple of sentences done, start getting into the flow of it, and *ring ring!* goes the Magic Bell.

This is not conducive to even getting the basics of the geometry of group sex right, much less making it flow correctly. I finally tossed Pip in her crate for twenty minutes, where she sulked, and then let her out and enjoyed a full half hour of not getting up to take one dog or another outside.

I did finish the scene and then the story, which I will be editing and posting tonight, but it took me quite a bit longer than it did. I have a lot of respect for people who write with children in the house. I can barely do it with dogs, and I can shut the dogs in their crates if they annoy me overmuch. (I try not to do it at night, because they're currently in their crates for eight hours a day.)

I think I'm going to start using Laura's desk in the library to write at, since it's closer to the door and doesn't involve me getting comfy on the couch and then needing to immediately get up to let the dogs out.

Princess Pip is in to be spayed today, since she's showing signs of being an early bloomer and it's better to spay cats and dogs before they figure out what sex is for. So I dropped her off this morning, she'll get spayed today, and she'll come home tomorrow morning.

I'm hoping this vet visit helps with the pee-spotting issue--whether she's marking or has a bladder infection of some sort, we don't know, but it's a bit annoying.

Boone is going to be incosolable tonight, I fear. Ah, well.

We've survived the first few days with Pip, and I have to say that she fits in really well to the household. Amazingly well, as a matter of fact. After initially not being sure about Boone, she decided he was really, really okay, and Boone is completely, totally, over the moon about her. I had no idea that getting another dog would make him as happy as it has, but he already seems calmer. This is possibly because he spends hours a day playing with Pip, and it tires him out.

She remains calm and very lovey. She is also totally Bryan's new girlfriend; he watches TV at night and she snuggles with him and sleeps. And...she jumps. Everywhere. Up onto the beds, on the couch, sailing off the rock wall in the backyard because it takes too much time to find the steps down. She thinks the cats are uninteresting, even Greebo, which is good. The worst they get is a sniff and a "you fail to be interesting".

Greebo is also very happy that Pip has arrived, since it means he no longer gets his ears cleaned out five times a day. (Boone has an ear fetish.) Crate training is going well, the crying is now limited to a little bit after the lights go out at night. And it's extremely cute to see Boone and Pip lying side by side in the crate, both of them munching crate cookies.

We're going to have different training difficulties than we did with Boone, though. Puppy origami is surprisingly difficult with her, I haven't been able to use a treat to make her sit yet. (Puppy origami is the art of using yummy treats to get puppies to sit, stand, lie down, and occasionally bow; it's precursor training for sitting and lying down on command.) We're going to need to do some work to convince her that she does need to be walking on a loose leash.

But she's smart. Really smart, as far as I can tell. She's pretty much potty-trained at this point except for a few accidents and some marking, and she has already figured out that if she butters up the humans, she will get picked up, and being carried around is better than walking any day.

Princess Pip she is!

So it happened like this:

I got home on Sunday from my trip to the peninsula (more on that later; let's just say that I love the place deeply even when it doesn't treat me so well) and Laura said, "there's something you need to see. Come with us!"

So I did. We went to the pet store, and there was this puppy. Tiny. Adorable. Friendly. Calm. And able to cast Charm Person with great effectiveness with an eye-blink and tail-wag.

I was like, "Um, no...we just got DONE with puppyness! But...awww...." Boone was so excited to see her, his whole body was wagging. He loves other dogs; he is pretty much a completely dog-focused dog. I'd been thinking on and off about the possibility of getting a companion for him, but I was like, "no, no more dogs."

I wandered off to get some coffee, and as I was walking down to Starbucks I thought, "Her name is Pip."

It was all over the moment I found her name.

Pip is very calm. She loves Bryan, loves being picked up and snuggled (and has earned herself the nickname Princess Pip because of it), thinks people are the best and Boone's pretty good too, and ignores the cats. She was raised in a daycare, so she likes children. She knows "come here", though she doesn't know her name quite yet. And she jumps! It took Boone until he was seven months old to be jumping as reliably as she is at four months. She's also partially potty-trained, though we're having a few adjustment issues.

She is not crate trained, though, and she cried off and on all night, even though she had Boone in the crate with her for company. She'll get used to it really quickly though, I think, once we manage to introduce the concept of "crate = safety, security, and cookies" to her. She also doesn't know how to walk on a leash really well yet, but that should come quickly as well.

Boone loves her. LOVES. When he's not playing with her he lays down and looks at her adoringly. He follows her everywhere. Not determined yet which of them is going to end up dominant, but I have this feeling she is. She is a Princess, after all.

New skills we need to learn: walking two dogs at once, keeping track of two puppies at once, managing to call only one dog at a time. Right now, I call Boone and Pip comes.

So, um. Puppy! Another puppy! (oh dear gods, another puppy...)